battle of the beaks

Week one of chick watch has been fantastic, we've had a great time and the three little ones have been doing a marvellous job of entertaining us.

The youngest one is not much smaller than the other two but is a little slower at getting food. It may need just a little time to gain in confidence and then it will join in the battle of the beaks with the others, pushing and shoving to be first! Slow it may be, but it still gets a hefty amount of food. They all do.

In fact, the chick that seems to be the most dominant in the nest (probably the eldest) ate so much on Wednesday that we could see its crop (the soft pouch on its chest) visibly swelling and swelling until it looked fit to burst! A first experience of having eaten too much and it didn't look comfortable.

The chick did the only thing it could do in the circumstances and setled down for a little snooze. Sleeping it off seemed to do the trick and when more food was brought a few hours later it was grappling for more.

At first, when the chicks were only a day or two old, the adult female would offer up food and then eat it herself if the chicks didn't take it straight away - now she has gone to the other extreme, desperately trying to stuff chunks of fish into unwilling beaks this morning.

The female is still spending time sat on them, though as they get bigger and more wriggly, she fidgets more. When they get too big to sit on, she will sit very close to them 'mantling' - that means using her body and wings as a shield to try and protect them from the weather, not just wind and rain but the strong sun too. As you can image, perched high up in a tree top, there is no escape from the blistering heat of the sun on a hot day.

We witnessed our first fight this morning. The eldest two chicks were really going for one another, beaks snapping and head butting. It's a measure of how much they've physically developed in the last few days that they are now able to control their bodies well enough to fight with each other! It's harmless enough really, just an example of competitiveness amongst siblings. It's bound to happen, in the intimacy of an osprey nest there is no respite from each other's company.

No such squabbling down on the ground. We are all gearing up for our first community weekend for the season - 26, 27 and 28 May from 10am until 6pm. Come along and see us if you can, it should be great fun.