Blogs

The large female osprey that kept appearing at the start of the month has now disappeared and has not been seen since last week. This seems to have relaxed our pair of ospreys with a third egg appearing on Sunday morning (12 April), and both birds are sharing the incubation.

The male bird has been carrying a lot of moss and bark into the nest over the last few days, with the female busy packing this around the eggs. The nest itself is very deep this year - some say this is a sign of bad weather to come - and is to ensure the safe keeping of the eggs so that they don’t roll out.

The nest cam as now been repositioned by remote control to give a better view of the nest and the eggs inside, visitors can now see the eggs clearly on the screens in the viewing centre.

All we have to do now is wait until the middle of May for the first sign of any chicks…

The Glaslyn ospreys have today revealed another egg in their nest – making it double trouble for the pair near Porthmadog.

Ospreys usually lay every other day so we had been expecting the second egg to be laid yesterday.  We can only assume that this second female osprey has been hassling our pair enough to cause the delay. 

We will expect a third egg in a couple of days so watch this space!

Another busy week was had here at the Glaslyn Osprey Project - both birds were busy building up the nest and feeding. On Monday a large female osprey (staff working at the site think that she may be one of the chicks from 2007) was seen attacking the nest, which caused both our ospreys to be very defensive. The large female osprey eventually flew off up the Glaslyn valley towards Beddgelert.

The large female re-appeared on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and again dive bombed our resident nest. No sighting of the large female was noted over the weekend, and there was reason to celebrate this morning (Monday 6 April) when the first egg of the season was sighted.

The female had been agitated on Sunday evening and when she returned back to the nest after 5pm last night, she was moving around the nest and engaging in displacement activity.  Normally the female osprey would lay every other day, with a total of three eggs expected during the next few days. Each egg will be incubated for around 37 days, which means hatching should occur in mid-May.  Watch this space!