My most memorable osprey experience

Katie asked you to let us know your most memorable osprey experiences, and thank you for sharing those you've sent.  I wondered whether you might like to share mine.  It's a bit long, Katie's advice to us is that blogs should be of no more than 400 words, but she's away right now so I'll risk it.

It was May 27th 1986. I was working here at Loch Garten as Osprey Warden (what Claire does now), and I received an urgent call from a “roving“ colleague, whose job it was to keep an eye as best he could on other osprey nest elsewhere in parts of Highland.

He was making his routine check of a particular nest, by spying the nest from a distance with a telescope and as he put his eye to the eyepiece, to his horror, he saw an egg thief up the nest tree, at the eyrie in the very act of stealing the eggs!

Watching from some distance, he was unable to do anything.  It was too far to get to quickly, too far away to be heard shouting and yelling at the egger, so feeling somewhat helpless, (imagine not being able to do anything!), he could only watch the robbery unfold from afar, noting anything down that might eventually help the police find and catch the perpetrator.  He watched and witnessed the egger go up and down the tree three times.  The terrain below the nest made it difficult to see the man all the time, and he kept dipping in and out of view.  Eventually he was seen to take to his heels and flee the area.

This was in the days before mobile phones, so my colleague then had to leave the scene to summon my help.  I set off to join him at the site and eventually we ventured out towards the tree.  Both adult osprey circled above us, alarming incessantly.  We combed the ground for any likely evidence and then I climbed the tree to check what, if anything, was in the nest – untouched eggs and the would-be thief was just curious?  Replica eggs to lure the birds back so nobody would know the nest had been robbed?

It was a tricky climb but when I reached the eyrie rim and peered in, the nest was empty.  We knew from a licensed nest-check some weeks before that there was a clutch of three eggs in that nest, but not now.

From his distant vantage point, my colleague had seen the man dip in and out of view and we pondered on what that was all about.  On a hunch that he might have been hiding the eggs, we set about searching.  The eggers thinking here would be to stash the eggs, then flee the area empty handed and so if stopped, would not have the eggs with him. Instead he would return at some later date, perhaps many weeks or months later, out of season perhaps, when the heat was off and retrieve his ill-gotten gains.  We combed the area beneath the tree, side by side back and forth, but nothing.  We had just about given up, when with almost the last action, my colleague lifted up a large heavy over-hanging peaty divot of heather and blaeberry.  And lo, here in the peat underneath, were the three eggs.

By now, some time had passed and the eggs had no doubt cooled and were cooling even more, with every passing second.  We had to move fast, very fast, if they were to survive.  We had nothing in which to put the eggs, and I can’t quite remember what exactly we did, wrapped them in a hat or scarf or something I think, but climbing the tree with all the eggs together was too risky, so with one precious egg at a time, I climbed up and down the tree three times (as the egger had done, for the same reason), to place the clutch back in the nest.

By this time it was raining, making the climb more tricky and slower each time and this would only add to the cooling of the eggs.  Eventually with all three eggs back in the nest cup, we beat a hasty retreat to enable the ospreys to come back to the nest, resume incubation and get the eggs warmed. Looking back, it probably was not all that long, but at the time it seemed like an age, as we waited and waited to see the female safely settled back on to the nest.  Time and time again, she approached the tree, made low passes over her nest but each time she stopped short of landing. This seemed to go on for ever, and the rain continued to pour down.  By now we were losing hope and despairing for those eggs, but then finally in she came again, one more time and this time she landed on the nest and eventually shuffled back on to her clutch.  There was nothing more we could do, so somewhat despondent, fearing the developing embryos in those eggs would by now have perished, we left to go and get dried off, but we seriously doubted our efforts would be successful.

On his rounds, my colleague (and others) continued to keep a distant eye on the nest and kept me informed that the female was still sitting, which was of some comfort, but on eggs that were likely to be duds.  However, later still on 23rd June, a feed was witnessed.  Imagine seeing that, after what had happened!  Something had indeed hatched.  The mixture of elation and relief was overwhelming.  It remains, to this day my most savoured osprey moment.

Eventually, weeks later, it was ringing time and on 20th July, when we went to the nest it contained one healthy osprey chick.  My memory of this very much focuses on the chick and I cannot now remember whether the other two eggs were there or had been disposed of by the parents or broken and become mashed into the nest platform, I just cannot remember,  the important bit though, was that an extra young osprey would enter the population from that nest after all.  It fledged on 14th August.

Presumably the other two eggs had chilled just that bit too much to survive, but one at least had made it and the success of this nest albeit with just that one chick, meant the parent birds would likely return and continue to breed at that site, and they did.

Postscript: I've checked with Roy Dennis and the chick was ringed G8153 - pale blue/black U - but it was never reported seen again or found.  So that doesn't mean it's not still out there somewhere, though it would be a veteran if it was, at 23 years of age.  -  Richard.