No, don't panic! All's well on the technical front (fingers crossed), but the interrupted viewing to which I refer is the absence of our ospreys from the nest for much of the day, meaning you will not have seen much of them. I'm afraid that's how it gets at this stage in the season when the birds have fledged and spend increasing amounts of time perched in trees in the vicinity of the nest but not in or on the nest itself.
We have had ospreys on site all day today, but we have struggled a bit to see them, as they have chosen to perch in trees behind the nest, 200-300 metres from the Osprey Centre itself. Virtually all our visitors today to the Centre, will have seen them though, through our telescopes, but you, our virtual visiting audience will not have. Sorry, but we cannot do much about that. Changing cables back and forth to put one then another camera on the live-streaming system , would I'm afraid be a bit of a faff, and we'd end up doing nothing else, as they have been tree-hopping all day, in one tree one minute seen from one camera, then in another tree moments later, seen from another camera.
We have been very busy with visitors today enjoying the ospreys of course, but also thrilling at our red squirrels too, especially children, chuckling at the antics of these, one of our rarer mammals in UK, yet seen so well here at Loch Garten, given their confiding nature. There are usually 4-6 squirrels on view somewhere here at any one time. The feeders have proved poular too, with juvenile great spotted woodpeckers now a fixture, for all to see. Though not rare, and everyone knows of the bird, if only from cartoons, but they are not a bird that it is easy to see well. Here at the Osprey Centre they feed within 3m from the Centre windows, and when seen at that distance, and through a 'scope, they prove to be a complete WOW for visitors.
Some of you have noticed the juvenile redstarts hopping about in the empty osprey nest. They are taking advantage of the ospreys' absence to forage there for flies and other invertebrates, attracted by fish remains. I mentioned previously in answer to a Q about what happens to the nest, that we do remove material from time to time, often in Spring before the ospreys arrive back. When we have done this, we have discovered that the nest is full of flies, finding a warm place to over-winter, owing to the heat generated by the well-fertilised compacted compost that the nest platform becomes by the end of the season.
Years ago, we examined the invertebrate content of the osprey nest and a nationally rare beetle was discovered living in the nest. It has been found in the nests of Common Buzzard ans Eurasian Sparrowhawk too, but in very few other places. It's not a beetle that lives on carrion, like fish bits,as you might expect, but on those bits of feather sheaths that you will perhaps have seen blowing around the nest when the young ospreys are on the nest busy preening their new feathers, it's the sheath material through which the feathers grow - the equivalent of bird dandruff I guess!?
So, we have rare birds, supporting rare beetles. A couple of flies have been found here too, that bear the site's name, with the specific parts of the name being gartensii and abernethii. It's not just all about ospreys here, there's much more besides.
STOP PRESS: Not just redstarts, but crested tits seen on the osprey nest this morning (28th July) at 09.00hrs. Perhaps we should start to keep an osprey nest species list? - Richard