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Thank you everyone at LG - I do understand your frustrations but as they say its technology and no one can predict the weather and what it can do. We have all been treated to some wonderful watching over the last few weeks through the webcam. I feel it has been such a priviledge seeing what we have seen so far. Thank you Richard for your updated information. Will you be at LG for next year?

REPLY:  I hope so!  Do you know something I don't?  Claire, David, Debbie, Malcolm and Ian are the seasonal team of 2009.  I am the permanent staff member here at Loch Garten.  You've scared me now!  -  Richard

Just back from the centre Richard and I missed you and Claire again, never mind there is always next year! It was great to see Rothes sitting in the tree near the nest all by herself looking very confident. I have a feeling Mallachie will go today, she was flapping away and almost taking off today. Can't believe there have been more intruders again today, EJ is fearless and constantly gives chase, what an amazing bird she is. I have enjoyed my 4 visits to LG so much and can I say a huge thank you to all the team, you are all brilliant and so enthusiastic and informative. I am so pleased I took the decision to holiday near to Loch Garten, the Abernethy forest and surrounding area is incredibly beautiful. Anyone who is thinking of coming to Scotland, make sure Loch Garten is on your list of places to visit, it's a magical place.

REPLY: Thanks John, sorry to have miised you on each of your 4 Centre visits.  Please to hear that you enjoyed your visit to us and the surrounding area.  -  Richard

Thanks for all the replies and the latest update, Richard. Must have taken some time 'specially if, like mine, your typing is 2/3 fingered. Maybe we should all get on to BT and get them to pull their finger out, (just joking.....shouldn't like to upset them). I wonder if they are aware of how many pairs of eyes are glued to this website every day. Meanwhile, Mrs Hobby is beautiful to look at and LotL is worth a look in, as is the Barn owl box. The chicks now move outside the box in the evening awaiting the next meal.

RICHARD,THANK YOU SO MUCH for the update on 'our wee family'. As long as we know  they are ok. I can imagine Rothes acting the 'Big Cheese' but I do love her!!!!

TISH...what do you mean "something happened and it was sent"? Mallachie & Garten are

         mine, so hands off.

ANNETTE...you are welcome. It is a lovely poem.

Richard thanks so much for your detailed blog letting us all know what is going on with our osprey family.  Rothes sounds as though she is a right little madam now she has taken flight and I can just imagine her looking at Mallachie and Garten and thinking well come on I have done it and once you get used to it the feeling is great.  i think we should bombard BT with telephone calls and get them to fix things for you (only joking).  Will just have to be patient and picture in our minds what is going on.

Thanks for the welcome update, Richard -I'm sure we were all getting a little anxious as to how things are  going  up there  so it is very good of you to take the time to let us know how the family are doing. Nice to know that the fish is still coming in regularly and that all three youngsters are having a go at feeding themselves - how exciting it will be to see them bring home a fish for themselves! Thanks for switching the camera- hope it's the same as last year, when it was panned around the trees where they were perched.

Thanks to the LG team for such a comprehensive update.  Just imagine the squeals of delight when the cam is up and running again, you will all possibly be deafened.  So, chins up/british bulldog spirit, we will fight them on the beaches...and all that jazz!!!!!

REPLY: Just this minute had a call from a colleague at HQ, suggesting I try something else to try to sort the problem.  Too late now to nip to Ctr to try it (plus I've had a Friday night glass of red) so I will go first thing, (well, 8am-ish) tomorrow morning to give it a try to see if we can get back on air.  See, I told you we were keen to try and sort as soon as.  I doubt if Mallachie will go this evening or very early tomorrow morning, especially if we have yet more (can there be more up there?) rain this evening, (raining as I type), tonight and tomorrow morning early.  So I'll have another go then to see if we can get things up and running by mid-late morning, by which time, if it is dry, Mallachie just might feel it's her time.  Fingers crossed.  -  Richard

Spent a pleasant couple of hours at LG this afternoon - thanks to Malcolm, Claire and Mr Anderson (sorry, didn't clock your forename). Thanks to Malcolm again for giving me the steer on the mystery of my swarm of tree sparrows, which aren't supposed to be up here in Aberdeenshire ! good to see Rothes flitting about.

Thanks for the update Richard. Was joking about not donating earlier. Pity no solar panel company would sponsor.

Think there could be a lot more miserable weather to come. Apart from it being the 'Glesga Fair', the jetstream's running a bit off course again and hence bringing lows for forseeable. yuk. No hope.

Richard, YOU ARE WONDERFUL!  With all the visitors, the awful weather and the effects of that, you must be tearing your hair.  Of course we can all be patient while the camera is down.  We know the wee family is in good hands.  Will you still be giving talks in Boat in early October?  That's the only time we're going to get to Strathspey this year, unfortunately.  Hope all is soon restored to calm for you all.

REPLY: Last talk of the summer programme in Boat is Monday 24th August.  -  Richard

What a sad feeling I got when I saw the Lowes nest just now, all empty. They must all be just off having a wee evening fly. I know it's to be expected but it will be very strange when our birds all go, won't it? I am new to this sit so it's going to be a first for me.

I was at Lochluichart today and saw the Osprey nest in the pylon. One bird (? the female) was sitting on the edge of the nest lookng in, but I couldn't see any sign of young. Loraine saw her 2 weeks ago and thought there were chicks. Hope the camera gets fixed soon, and thanks Richard and co for keeping us up to date.

Richard all the electricy suppliers are always going on about how green there electricy is how much CO2 will be saved if you do not have to run a generator so could we not appeal to them to show how green their credentials are by installing a power supply to LG. The bloggers could start a petion to SSE if it would help. Also our first minister whose constituncy is up near you is always going on about getting people to come to Scotland so we should make him aware of all the good work LG does to get visitors to come to Scotland to see the LG ospreys and not just from the UK but from all over the world. The money that is sqandered on quangos and other goverment talking shops if it was given to something that was both green and advantages to the community would be better for Scotland.

07.50 Richard, I'll echo all other comments, everything crossed and good luck with the

camera, and if it can't be fixed... I'm still glad for all updates here, appreciate it a lot, THANKS!! TIRRICK, I liked your poem as well :)

Richard: There are many ways to prevent power surge on power and telephone equipment so my question is ... did the LG centre have these devices in place if not I take it by now you will have instigated their installation for future weather interruptions.

Sadly I believe LG has been hit twice this year already.

CliveT

I wrote my own poem, inspired by all the creative juices flowing here in the blogs! It's a free verse piece, so it's not meant to rhyme, and it's mean to cheer us up when we get that empty nest syndrome when our beloved ospreys have set off South. (By the way - the knife fish is a west african freshwater fish, it's quite large and who knows our girls may find a few!)

Chocolate nest

with splash of sphagnum pink;

she makes their straggly bed

with hotelier’s grace

and nurse’s care.

Once beaks agape,

now wings aloft,

we wait while Africa calls

with jacaranda blue

and baobab brown.

Our empty hearts

will be their knife fish feast.

What a lovely sound...I can hear ?EJ and chick calling. At least we know they are in fine fettle and in my minds eye I can see them. I wonder if they miss being the centre of attention :o ))

Chicks at L of L do come ack to be fed but it is just hit and a miss if you are on at the right time but I hate this empty nest syndrome we suffer from every year but at the same time great to see them doing what nature intended them to do. Poor birds with this terrible weather and Richard the weather is out with your control though we know you do your utmost to keep things going for us but you relax we all understand

Oh dear Richard I didn't mean to do that!  We joined at LG last year but didn't meet you and it seemed to be mainly David that did the blogs so I didn't realise you were there!  I jolly well hope that you will be there next year as the centre seems to be thriving and you have kept us so informed of everything that is happening.  Well done to all of you.

Richard, appreciate all you are doing to resolve.  Thanks for update.

Maureen, Tish:  stop arguing :-) ......  Garten is mine!!!

I was wondering if any blogger who is visiting LG today/tomorrow (or until we are back up and running) would be as kind and post a descriptive blog about nest activity for the rest of us?  This would satisfy us who are stuck at home and also help the team. 

REPLY:  Yes indeed that would help us, it being one less thing to do at a very busy time.  Thanks in advance to whoever might visit today and do that.  -  Richard

Qu:  Richard, I'm a wee bit concerned about the weather :-(    Could this constant rain harm Mallachie and Garten or are they now old enough whereby their new feathers are well up to withstanding such wet conditions? 

REPLY:  Unlikely to be problem, virtually fully-feathered now so there ought not be an issue of keeping warm and dry, within at least, even though the outer feathers will be very wet.  Thier plumage though is likely to be oilier than most other birds of prey given their habits of deliberately getting wet when fishing, one of many adaptations they have to equip them to a life of catching fish.  -  Richard

Richard, on from the earlier message, assuming that the router is connected to a PC, if it was fried by a lightning strike its a 99.9% certainty that the NIC on the PC cooked as well, if not the entire motherboard (fingers crossed it's just the NIC and the router), if the PC is still running OK, all well & good.  

REPLY:  That's kind of you Simon, thanks for the advice & offer, but the tests we did this morning has now made us less convinced that the router is indeed the problem (still could be) but it might be a phone-line issue.  Folk down south are still on the case trying to troubleshoot this.  The PC does seem to be ok -  Richard

Richard, one other suggestion although you may have already tried it? Try plugging a phone into the socket to see if there is a dail tone, if there is, this would eliminate a line issue, just a thought.

REPLY: Yep, tried this, line sees fine too.  -  Richard

Another thought? It just occurred to me that the live cam runs at 132kbps, being where the centre is the thought crossed my mind that you are running on an ISDN link running both channels I.E 2 x 64kbps channels rather than an ADSL link, if this is the case, whatever the issue is, you are probably going to be reliant on BT to resolve the issue as ISDN boxes and ADSL boxes are entirely different. If you are on an ADSL link there might be a possibility of getting a result? However, if the exchange took a whack it may be that the card at the exchange has fallen over?

REPLY:  Whooooaaa!  You're losing me now.  You very clearly know much much more about this techie-stuff than I do. Techie colleagues at HQ will I assume know what you're on about Si, even if I don't.  Thanks for giving all this so much thought, too.  We'll get there eventually, I'm sure.  Cheers.  -  Richard

Morning all. Yet another day in which to accomplish Things That Don't Involve Watching Ospreys. RICHARD: If you ever get to SoCal, I'll taken you wine-tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley, just over the hill from us, to make up for all the grief we cause you.  :-)

4:22 UK time One of the  girls is on the nest. Dawn has not  fully broken so it is not light enough to clearly see which one.. I don't see an aerial so it  may be Garten.  However, she is eating so is this  fish left over from last night? I am sure Odin hasn't arrived yet with breakfast. Did she stay with the fish on the nest all night?

4:49 Wait that  was EJ on the nest at dawn!! Now one of the  girls came and she it feeding it. The other two have not shown up.  Did EJ go fishing in the dark?

5:05 Now EJ is feeding two of the girls. I wonder if at first  they didn't see that she had a fish because it was dark .

5: 20 Two of the girls ate and left and EJ is left to finish  the fish. Now EJ is just standing on the nest scanning the area perhaps for the  third   chick who didn't come to eat.  Now that  it is light it looks like  it was Garten who first realized EJ was on the nest with a fish. Well Garten was always the first at the table. LOL