The battle of the birds has been ongoing all week, as the osprey pair continue to fend off challenges from other species. On Tuesday morning at about 7:30am, before the day's visitors arrived, a female Goshawk plunged high out of the sky from the right of the nest. She flew like a jet-fighter towards the female osprey, who was also up in the air at the time having a little fly around as the male incubated the eggs. The goshawk pulled out of the dive at the last minute, avoiding a collision by inches. The female osprey defended her territory well, as she has done against every other bird that has looked like posing a threat to her family. It didn't take long to see the goshawk off. A few moments later, it made a hasty retreat back towards Moel Ddu, and has not been seen since.
It's almost as if all the local resident birds are testing the osprey pair out to see how sharp they are and whether there are any holes in their defence strategy. There aren't of course. This pair are young enough to respond energetically but experienced enough to know that potential threats are all around.
One mystery that had been puzzling us has been solved this week. You may remember that a couple of weeks back, we were baffled by the bizarre 'winking' that the ospreys have been doing whilst sat on the nest. By zooming in on the birds, we could see that they were in the habit of closing one eye as they sat. They are still doing it and it really looks quite comical - many visitors had commented on it. Well, a group of visiting students and an ecology expert from Bangor University happened to stop by as part of a field trip this week and think they have the answer. It is likely that this is the osprey's way of snoozing. Ospreys, like most birds, don't sleep in the same way that humans do. Instead, they will shut down one side of the brain at a time to rest it, closing one eye as they do so - literally getting a few winks of sleep. The other side of their brain, meanwhile, is alert and wide awake.
An extreme example of peculiar sleeping habits among the bird world occurs in swifts, which sleep whilst flying - just grabbing a few moments at a time! Actually, swifts are supreme flyers and do almost everything else in the air too including mating and eating. In fact, fledgling swifts spend the first few years of their lives entirely in the air without landing at all. This is a great time of year for swift spotting as these birds are just starting to return to the UK for the breeding season. You are likely to see them flying high in the air, often in excited screaming groups - look out for their sooty brown colour, long wings and short, forked tail. They have not been seen at the Glaslyn osprey site yet but we should have a handful or so over the next couple of weeks. Our friends in the RSPB reserves at Conwy and Ynys-hir tell us that they have a few swifts already.