First Kailzie Wildlife Festival takes place this weekend

The first ever wildlife festival organised by the Friends of Kailzie Wildlife will be held at Kailzie Gardens on 9th and 10th June with events and activities for all the family to enjoy and get involved in.

The festival starts at 10am on 9th June, with exhibitions, stalls and activities. The first activity on the day will be to check the mammal traps for small animals such as mice and voles. These will then be released before the weather gets too warm, as any caught will have gone into the traps the previous evening. They will have had a good feed from the food left for them and a sleep in the bedding provided in the Longworth traps! The mammals can be viewed at close quarters and then selected children from the crowd will be allowed to release them.

Throughout the day there will be themed activities such as pond dipping, stream dipping, heritage tree walks, bird watching trips and bug hunts all led by conservation organisations such as Tweed Valley Osprey Project, RSPB and Borders Forest Trust, Forestry Commission Scotland as well as the museum service and volunteers.

Professional ornithologist Roy Dennis is officially opening the festival at 11.30am on Saturday 9th June followed by a talk in the Osprey and Nature Watch Centre about his ‘life of ospreys’ and many people are looking forward to meeting such an expert whose life has been dedicated to these famous birds since the early days of their return from extinction in the UK.

For more information call Kailzie Gardens on 01721 720007 via the FC Scotland Facebook page or visit the website http://www.kailziewildlife.org/

News of Previous Osprey Chicks

Whilst the torturous wait for the first egg of 2009 on our main osprey nest goes on , I thought I'd share some good news with everyone about some of our previous osprey offspring.

As everyone knows, the odds are stacked against our chicks, with a survival rate in the first 12 months estimated to be between just 25-50%.

At his excellent recent talk in Edinburgh , Roy Dennis pointed out that even on the nest it is not unusual for not all chicks to survive to fledge as this depends entirely on fish supply and therefore directly on the skill and dedication of the male bird. We are very lucky that our main nest male is such an excellent provider!

Add to this the many hazards of their first lonely long migration and their first couple of years in Africa, and we can only expect a small number of the birds we watch growing up here making it back as adults to breed in the future.

However, there are bright examples such as one of our chicks born in 2005 in the Tweed Valley. The female chick was fitted with a green darvic ring 'DE' , and she was first seen at Rutland Water in East Anglia in July 2007, where she stayed until September, as is common in juvenile birds. She was seen again in 2008, but has not yet made an appearance in 2009.

The definition of true success for a project like ours is to know that our birds become part of the breeding population and future of the species, so we hope she survives and makes Rutland her home!

Incidentally the other chick from the same 2005 nest, also a female, was found dead (apparently electrocuted) in Cordoba Spain on 16th September 2008, she had flown a distance of 2000km from the nest site to the site where she was recovered.

Another chick hatched near Peebles in 2003 was reported to have flown free after being found injured after being downed by the downdraft of a Hercules aircraft at a fish farm on Loch Ken in 2008.

Lets hope 2009 is the year we get more news of the fate of our Tweed Valley Osprey chicks!