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I just got back today from time away, so I promptly went to the Osprey Centre to check on and top up the feeders.  My colleague Stewart was already there doing same, and chatting to him, it appears that the disappearance from screen of the giant feeder was a result of the ingenuity of the resident red squirrels. 

Not content with the hopper-fed peanut feeder available to them, the little blighters had worked out that they could have themselves a feeding bonanza. They, or one particularly bright individual chewed through the length of washing line rope suspending the 3m length of drainpipe full of nuts, sending it crashing to the ground and scattering a veritable feast of nuts accessible for all.  It's a shame this wasn't to be seen on camera by anyone or that we don't have a microphone rigged-up there, because if squirrels could laugh, they surely would have been heard rolling about in fits of laughter at their success at undoing our ingenuity.

There were no squirrels to be seen there today, due, I suspect to them being tucked-up in their dreys, sleeping of the excesses of their ill-gotten gains.  The ground must have been absolutely awash with nuts, readily hoovered up, over the course of days by the squirrels and birds alike, whilst you all thought they were hard done by, having no food to eat.  We now no-doubt have red squirrels the size of wombats, stuffed to the point of splitting, waddling gleefully about the forest chuckling to themselves.

In my pre-Christmas posting, I remarked how un-festive it was here then.  It sure is very festive now, albeit a tad late. I was away in the tropical south, (well, Leicestershire) but apparently conditions changed on Christmas Eve, when clear skies and a very starry night, meant a sharp frost on Christmas morning, that has persisited ever since. It is now 30th December, and the past five nights have been minus(-)10, -12, -12, -13 and today -14 degress C.  If you watch the weather on TV and it gives -4 degrees for Aviemore (our nearest official Met Station) then the Loch Garten area is always another 4 degrees below that given.

And it looks absolutely beautiful.  Each night's frost, not at all warmed and reduced by the following sub-zero daytime temperatures, means that night by night the rime builds, frost, on frost, on frost, until you end up with fence line wires the thickness of washing line rope and the leafless trees and bushes encrusted with white and everywhere completely white-over & locked-up by frost, with not a breath of wind, just utterly still and silent.  Not surprisingly, Loch Garten has re-frozen again too, this time very thickly. In the near-silence around the loch, all you can hear is the ice creaking at the water's edge. As for the birds?  What birds?  The geese & ducks have moved out, for now no doubt gone to somewhere milder. 

With the high pressure clear skies set to stay with us over the next few days, this will herald a very, very frosty Hogmanay. So, if it's anything like as cold where you are, and you're out & about first-footing tomorrow night, then wrap up warmly and, as they say, have a good one when it comes.

 Happy New Year!

Richard Thaxton - Loch Garten site manager

Merry Christmas to everyone.

In the manic run-up to the festivities and all that that can entail (hic!), plus end of year loose-ends to try to sort out, various work plates to keep spinning, and unfortunately some illness - I'm afraid we're down to a skeleton crew of those of us who can download the latest satellite data, thus enabling us to tell you where Nethy will be tucking-in to her festive fare this Christmas. 

Lac de Guiers is my guess, but just to say that we might not be able to up-date her whereabouts, between now and 5pm today, this side of the Yultide holiday. Very sorry. We are on the case, but in case it doesn't happen this afternoon, I thought I should at least say why and offer an apology.

Meantime though, may I take this opportunity to say, on behalf of Alice, the summer Osprey Team of 2008, Katie in the web-team and myself - very many thanks for all your; interest, support, encouragement, kind comments etc etc this past year.

It has all been fantastic and we here have been completely inspired by the level of interest you all have shown in this aspect of our work with ospreys, and other aspects too.  Thanks too, to those of you who have taken this interest further and joined RSPB, if you weren't a member already. We're grateful to you all for the support you give in this way.  Thanks also for the wonderful response to the Bird of Prey campaign and all the pledge-signing that you have done - just marvellous.  And finally our thanks for all the festive best wishes sent through to us here, either by blog comment, e-mail or cards by post.

Alas, it's not very festive here at Loch Garten just now.  It is very mild, no hint of snow on its way and the loch has thawed completely, but as of yesterday, the days are drawing out now !  It might only be a matter of a few minutes per day for now, but at least we're on that inexorable slope towards Spring - hoorah!  Come New Year, on bright sunny days, here on the River Spey, dippers can sometimes be heard venturing into song, heralding the Spring's advance.  I for one, will be out there on January 1st hoping to hear it, or any such other up-lifting early sign of winter's darkest days being behind us. Get out there too folks, if you can, and see what winter wildlife you can see or hear.  Have a great Christmas & New Year.

We'll be back in touch on Monday 5th January.

Very best wishes

Richard Thaxton - Loch Garten site manager.

I'm not sure if any of you might have been watching the feeder cam at Loch Garten at around lunchtime today, if you were you'll have had a couple of hours of no images, please accept my apologies for that, but we wanted to carry out our exciting new installation without too many people watching!

If you go on there now (http://www.rspb.org.uk/webcams/feeders/abernethyvideo.asp for the live feed), you might notice a slight change - our giant feeder is now installed. You may be able to spot the grey pipe extending up above the feeder in the centre of the shot. At over 1m long, this new and improved feeder should keep the birds going for a couple of days longer than our standard sized feeders! This means the food is less likely to run out between fills - which can only be a good thing as often the weather can get very cold between Christmas and Hogmanay (-15 degrees C at night, sorry not sure what that is in Fahrenheit) The installation is still a bit 'Heath Robinson', but we'll improve that in due course, so please no comments about bent nails, grey not being very camouflaged etc! I wanted to get it up and working before heading south for Christmas.

Richard will update you on Nethy's whereabouts on Friday. Meantime, have a great Christmas from me and I'll be back in the new year.

Alice

I've just updated the map of Nethy's whereabouts for this week (up until 9am this morning at any rate). Nethy is still on the banks of Lac de Guiers, flitting around a fairly localised area and with just under two weeks until Christmas I'd put money on her spending Christmas there.

It's feeling pretty Christmassy here at Abernethy. We've just spent a bit of the afternoon putting up the tree in Forest Lodge which is looking good (especially in the dark when you can't see all the tat we've found to put on it).

Outside it's still pretty cold, Loch Garten is pretty much completely frozen over and so the geese who choose to roost on there are a lot more garrulous (Richard's word, not mine) at night, as they stand about nervously on the ice, knowing they're that bit more vulnerable to a fox or otter potentially wandering out to them. On Wednesday I was out with a group of secondary school pupils to continue our work digging out a dragonfly pond with cromes, and the ice was at least 3 inches (7.5cm) thick in places. This meant we could get out a lot further onto the watery bog, but couldn't dig out much without doing some ice breaking first!

Speaking of Christmas (sorry shameless promotion coming up) if you're stuck for inspiration of what to get any of your relatives this Christmas, why not buy them a gift membership of RSPB? It's a gift that lasts all year and will help support the work RSPB does all year here and abroad. You need to sign up by 15th December to guarantee that the welcome pack reaches your recipient in time for Christmas. So don't delay, join today!

I'll add the last data point to the map on Monday. Have a nice weekend.

Alice

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Monday 15th @ 16.50 

A quick check of the data shows that the 5pm point for Friday hasn't come through, so I haven't added it to the map yet, I expect it'll come through with the next lot of data on Friday, so tune in again then.

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My thanks to Alice for holding the fort in my absence. On my return, it was good to hear from her today that all is well with Nethy.

In catching up on the blog and your comments, can I also add my apologies for the blip in servicing the feeders.  I was away, and as Alice explained she was all the busier because of that.  Do please rest assured that we strive to keep on top of filling them. Also I might point out that if they do empty before we get back to them, there are always an awful lot of crumbs on the ground beneath the feeders - dropped peanuts, bits dropped by squirrels etc.  Of course you don't see that, so I understand your concern, but believe me the situation for the birds isn't necessarily as bad as it might look on screen. Our colleague Stewart, who kindly provided us with some feeder-cover last week told me this morning that there were three crested tits foraging on the spillage beneath the feeders when he went to fill them up.  With the Christmas break on the horizon, Alice is tasked with making a larger feeder that will hold more nuts, to help to try and enable us to keep it topped with their festive fare, at a time when we'll be tucking in to ours. The way they eat, we'll likely need a grain hopper!

Now I know this bit might hurt, especially for those of you missing Nethy and eagerly awaiting the osprey's return here in late March, but I was able to get an osprey fix last week.  I was in Trinidad and was lucky enough to see several ospreys, inlcuding three circling together at one point and another that was sat in a tree just 30ft above my head as I passed underneath it in a boat drifting through the Caroni mangrove swamp.  It was wonderful to see them after so long, well, three months - but it seems like an age. They were presumably birds from North America, wintering there in wamer climes, akin to Nethy in Senegal.

Richard Thaxton

Just a very quick update before I head out with the volunteers to mark up some trees for deadwood creation - last week's data is all in and complete (up to and including last Friday, 5th December).

For those of you who are interested, we all passed the tree climbing assesment on Saturday, though the icy branches didn't help!

Tune in on Friday for the next update.

Alice

It's Friday again, and time for an update on Nethy. Unsurprisingly she's still at Lac de Guiers, at least she was up until 5pm yesterday (Thursday 4th December). The fishing must still be good. The data that's come through is a bit incomplete (30th November points are missing) and I'll not get today's data until Monday, but don't worry, I'll update the map again then. The points that have come through are onto the map.

Here at Abernethy there still a fair bit of snow around, though it got a lot milder yesterday and today so it's getting pretty slushy. The tree climbing course continued, it's not the best experience climbing up a larch tree (though they are pretty rare here at Abernethy) with downwards sloping branches and sleety rain dripping down your neck! But the assesment is tomorrow and hopefully we'll all pass...

Have a nice weekend,

Alice

As promised, the map is now updated up until 5pm on Friday (28th Novemeber). Nethy is still on the banks of Lac de Guiers having a relaxing time (I'm assuming). Hopefully the data will come through on time this week so I'll be able to update the map before the weekend.

She'll certainly be having a warmer time than here at Abernethy. I don't know how cold it was over the weekend, but I had ice inside the windows on both Saturday and Sunday mornings - a very good motivator for chopping wood and cleaning. It's not much warmer today (Monday) though the tree climbing course I'm on this week is good for keeping warm (so long as you don't spend too long standing around on the ground).

That's all for now,

Alice