Wednesday 13 August 2008

Growing Up and Away

Our three Osprey chicks are seemingly too busy showing off their new found flying skills too bother too much with visiting the nest this week. They only seem to appear ( like most teenagers) when there is the offer of food around!

The male bird is still devotedly bringing fish back to nest for his offspring, and whichever chicks is closest at the time scores the whole thing. Interestingly , one of the chicks yesterday only bothered to eat about half of one such fish, leaving the remains on the nest- which is a good sign, because it means he can't be too hungry!
There have been several occasions this week when the youngsters have turned up at the nest carrying fish which we can only assume they have caught themselves, which is another great sign that they are perfecting the skills they will soon need to survive on their own.

One beneficiary of this abundance is the cheeky Jay which has realised the Osprey nest is a good place to hang around to score a free meal of fish scraps- we've been seeing more of it than our Ospreys!
The upside of the quiet on the nest is that its a great time to try your hand at spotting our birds out and about in the Borders- come and see us in the centres for tips on where best to look in the area. Be sure to let us know is you have luck!

1 comment:

  1. We had an intruder Osprey on the nest today. Zooming in on the bird I could see that it was unringed but was not our female as the markings on the head were different. Strangely none of our Osprey family returned to defend the nest. The Jay was also back on the nest briefly. We seem to have a problem with the camera again unfortunately. Although it was zooming in and out ok early on the zoom was not working later on this morning.

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