Blogs

The female ospreys have not been seen this week at all, this includes the mother osprey and two female chicks (tag numbers 90 and 91). It’s possible that they have started their migration, the only ospreys left now are the father and middle male chick (tag YF).

After stopping feeding the male chick for a few days, the father is now feeding him again with fish on a regular basis. We were hoping that he would have stopped feeding the chick by now to encourage independence and the potential start of his migration as the others have done – but this is not the case yet.

At 2pm yesterday (Wednesday 26 August) another adult female osprey was seen flying around the nest.  She eventually landed on the nest and tried for up to 40 mins to take a fish off the young male, but eventually he chased her off.

We originally thought this female osprey was the mother osprey, however on closer inspection we realised she had lighter markings on her chest and the young male chick did not recognise her.

In June and July, I visited several local schools to raise awareness of the project and we set up a competition where we asked the children to send in potential names for the three chicks. This competition will close on Monday 31 August and we’ll be choosing the names at random the same day – we’ll post the results on the blog immediately.

The Glaslyn Osprey site reached a milestone last weekend and recorded its 30,000th visit. The coffee morning on Saturday 22 August was very well attended and was a great success, we were also lucky enough to have great weather the whole day. Thank you to everyone for their support and help on the day.

I’ve managed to get hold of some pictures of the ringing in response to several of you enquiring to see the process taking place. The lady you can see in the picture is Adrienne Stratford who works for the BTO, and she along with another gentleman helped to ring the three osprey chicks in June this year.

Just to let you all know to keep your eyes peeled if you’re in the Llanddeusant area over the next few days as Rothes - one of Loch Garten’s osprey chicks - has begun her migration to Africa and was seen yesterday morning at 5am near Llanddeusant on Anglesey.
 
The female chick was last seen at Loch Garten on Sunday 9 August and was reported to have stopped off near Llanddeusant yesterday.

She’s had an interesting route so far, venturing north, as far as Garve, north west of Inverness, on Friday, before returning back to the nest area and then departing south on Sunday morning.

She passed close to Ardrishaig on Loch Lommond-side, over flew Saltcoats, Ayrshire, heading out over the Irish Sea passing over Isle of Man and has now been spotted near Llanddeusant.
 
The eager chick began her long migration before the adult female EJ. The rest of the clan EJ, Odina, Mallachie and Garten remain at Loch Garten but are expected to leave on their long migration over the next couple of weeks.

To follow the Loch Garten osprey’s migration visit:  www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/l/lochgarten/blog.asp

I’ve been going through some of your comments today and noticed a few questions from one or two of you. So to answer your enquiries the three chicks were ringed on Thursday 18 June, and at this point the youngest chick was approximately four and a half weeks old, the middle and eldest chick were approximately five weeks old.

The youngest chick is female and has been tagged with the numbers 91, the middle chick is male and was tagged with the letters YF and the eldest chick is female and was tagged with the numbers 90.

I’m also looking into uploading the images for those of you who’d like to see the ringing take place, so I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from BTO if I can have access to the images and will upload them onto the blog immediately.

Thanks to you all for your continued interest

We’re very sorry not to have uploaded a blog for so long, but the blogging software has been updated recently and we have been having some teething problems with the software, but we’re back on track now and will keep you all updated until the end of the season.

Since we updated you in mid July about the chicks fledging they have now become very independent. The mother has not been seen for two days (since Saturday 8 August) and hasn’t been on the nest for over a week, this is normal behaviour as the female will start her migration before the rest of the family.

The two older chicks have started to fish for themselves, but the youngest chick (tag 91) is still relying on her father to feed her. All three chicks have been seen flying around the nest, and in the surrounding area, and are probably feeding around the river in the valley.

They all return to the nest roughly two times a day, usually first thing in the morning around 7am and anytime after 4pm in the afternoon. The eldest chick (tag 90) doesn’t return as often as the rest of the family, this is a good sign and demonstrates that she is becoming a lot more independent and able to feed for herself.

The youngest chick is still very dependent on the father for food, she still sits on the nest and calls for 20 minutes  every day, when she sees her father approach with food she’ll fly to meet him, grab the food and bring it back to the nest to eat.

All three chicks are the same size now and the father will ease off from feeding the youngest so that she becomes independent. We should be seeing the chicks less and less over the next few weeks as they prepare for their first trip to Africa where they live over the winter.

This trip is approx 3,500 miles one-way and the chicks will do this in stages, stopping every so often to rest and feed.

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone involved especially those who  supported the Community Weekend on the 18 and 19 July, this was a great success even though the weather was a bit damp!

The next event will be a coffee morning on Saturday 22 August from 10am until 2pm, where there will also be a car boot sale as well as several cake stalls set up on the day. If you want to know more please call me on 07921 284 321.