Our osprey chicks are now over a week old



Our three chicks and proud parents

The osprey parents have settled into the routine of family life and in just one week since the three chicks have hatched, they have grown considerably. From the tiny, fragile, wobbly chicks that they were, they have become strong and sturdy and covered in light grey downy feathering.
These soft fluffy type feathers are excellent insulation against cold weather but are not waterproof, so the young chicks are very susceptible to cold at this stage in their lives. Because of this, the osprey parents remain very attentive of their young until they can become more independent. In cold or wet weather the female will shelter the young chicks beneath her. The warm sunny weather means that the chicks can be left for short periods but the parent birds will never be far away, perhaps sitting on a nearby perch to preen, to keep their feathers in prime condition. Any sign of danger, such as a passing crow or predator and the adults will be back on to the nest and ready to protect their young straight away.

The female appeared to be pre-occupied with some nest adornment during the week as she returned to the nest with a larch stick which must have been at least 1.5m in length. She put it across the centre of the nest and perched on it for a while with the young chicks below, looking up at her. Eventually she decided to move it into a side position along the flank of the nest and seemed to be satisfied with her handiwork. Throughout the season, the adult birds add material to the nest and they will often grab a clump of moss from the forest floor and add this to the occupied part of the nest. This will help to keep their living space clean and to prevent from attracting flies.

The young chicks are pretty well house trained too and they can be seen moving into position to point their rear end towards the outside of the nest, to fire excrement away from the eyrie.  This is essential hygiene to keep the nest site clean and free from flies which could carry disease. 

Herons.

The heron nest remains abandoned since the sad demise of the two chicks and the disappearance of the third egg. It is far too late in the season for the parent birds to attempt to breed again for this year.

Blue Tits

The little blue tit family has finally hatched but over the past few days the number of chicks is going down. The blue tit had a clutch of ten eggs and it seemed to be a full clutch of chicks that had hatched but there were only 6 heads reaching up to be fed today. The very cold spring and the awful summer last year has brought about a decline in number of butterfly and moth caterpillars. Usually the young tits would be seen being fed on juicy green caterpillars but again it would seem that flies and spiders have been offered to the young chicks. This is not as nutritious as the caterpillars which are high in protein and water content. Most of the insects are made up of exoskeleton and are of little value to young which need to grow quickly. The adult bird removes dead chicks from the nest to prevent attracting predators.

Highs and Lows at the Tweed Valley Nests



Three tiny osprey chicks hatched



A hat trick of osprey chicks, have hatched this week. The first osprey chick hatched on 22nd May exactly 40 days since it was laid,  followed by the second and then the third chick on consecutive days.

The chicks are so fragile and tiny looking when they first hatch, looking like tiny fluffy ping pong ball heads with the characteristic dark eye-stripe marking their osprey identity.

After hatching, they wobble about and strain to reach up to mum as she leans in to feed them with tiny scraps of raw fish torn straight from the live catch brought in by her faithful partner, white leg ring SS.

After only a couple of days the chicks begin to find strength and they are reaching up and stretching and holding their heads steady, to receive meals. They grow at a phenomenal rate on the diet of raw fish which is superbly rich in protein. Dad will have to work really hard to make sure that he brings in enough fish to feed his family, so that they will become big and strong. He is a very good provider and this is his tenth brood of chicks this year with the same unringed female. They are very experienced parents and they take great care of their young.

Tragedy Strikes



Sadly, the heron family that was on camera with two chicks hatched and one egg still not hatched, has been struck by tragedy. Firstly one chick seemed to have disappeared followed by the second chick gone by the next morning. This just left the single egg and the next day when the cameras came on, even the egg had vanished. We keep seeing the sad parent birds dropping in to the nest and standing and looking but their whole brood for the year have vanished. We did not see what happened but we have witnessed the shadowy black form of a crow lurking in the tree top and it would seem that it must have predated on the young chicks and then returned to take the egg too.

We have often made reference to the contrasting parenting skills of the two species of osprey and heron. Herons make little effort to safeguard their young and leave them for long periods of time which leaves them open to all manner of dangers. The birds have paid a high price this year for their nesting strategy. The ospreys, by comparison are very attentive to their young and there is always one of the parents at the nest to guard their brood. They will see off any threat with tenacity and this has made them the successful breeders that they are on the main nest.

The chicks will grow quickly and the daily family life can be viewed on high definition camera in real time in the two visitor centres of Glentress Wildwatch room in Glentress Forest and in the Osprey and Nature Watch Centre at Kailzie Gardens.



Possible hatching dates for ospreys and herons....

The waiting game has begun in earnest as we watch the two live screens with the heron nest and the osprey nest on camera at Kailzie Gardens Osprey and Nature Watch Centre and the osprey nest at Glentress Peel Wildwatch room. The ospreys and herons at the nest are engaged in full time incubation duties and it is fascinating to watch the behaviour and different strategies adopted by the two different species towards their nesting activities and in the rearing of their young.



Glentress Peel Wildwatch

The osprey pair at the main nest behave as a very close partnership. The incubation duties appear to be equally shared and there seem to be genuinely affectionate moments between the two expectant parents. They sidle up close together, often the male will gently nudge the female until she is persuaded to rise up off the eggs and let him take a turn at incubating.


During this period a lot of nest scraping takes place and fiddling about with sticks to move from one side of the nest to the other, possibly a way to occupy the time. It is easy to tell the difference between the adults not just because the male has the leg ring white SS but he is about one third smaller than the female and has a pure white chest, whereas the larger female has a streaked chestnut band of feathering on her chest and the markings on the back of her head crest look like a chocolate coloured concorde. 

Heron adults appear to be identical to each other, the text books tell us that the parents share incubation duties but we have never witnessed a swapping over at the nest, so perhaps this only happens infrequently. We have not witnessed any interaction between parent birds and never know if it is the male or the female that is sitting on duty. Apparently the male heron is the larger of the two but only really noticeable in wing length and beak length which is not obvious at all when they are sitting incubating. Both birds are strikingly handsome with long black head plumes and sleek grey plumage with streaked black, speckled, neck feathering. They sit motionless when incubating for long periods and often we double check that the camera is still working, when suddenly, the bird will stand and reach down to turn the three blue/green eggs.

Osprey incubation takes between 37 and 42 days and the first egg was laid on 12th April, so we can expect that the earliest likely hatching date for the first egg could be 19th May.





Kailzie Osprey and nature watch



The heron eggs were laid on 20th April, 24th and 27th April and they take 25 to 26 days to incubate, meaning that we will have live hatching on camera anytime from the 16th May. Because they have nested so late this year it will be the first time we have ever seen the heron chicks when they have just hatched. We are very excited about watching the heron chicks develop this year as we get to see the family raised right from the very start. Heron siblings behave with a great deal of rivalry and there can be many dramas, often with older siblings killing off younger ones and even eating them.



Ospreys have never displayed such behaviour in the nest in the ten years that we have watched this family. The parents are very attentive to their young whereas the heron parents have a very different approach, delivering food and leaving the chicks for long periods in the nest alone.

The camera nest box became occupied with a blue tit nest building very early in April and then all activity seemed to come to a halt. The warm sunny weather seems to have kick-started the nesting imperative and the blue tit has been seen actively nest building again, although we have not seen any eggs yet. It would appear that the cold snap has caused the blue tit to delay laying which is good because they need to wait until there is a plentiful supply of caterpillars to feed any young. Last year they were caught out by laying early and the wet weather meant there were no caterpillars. We watched as one chick after another starved and the sad image of the blue tit removing dead nestlings is hopefully not to be repeated this year. Populations do fluctuate due to seasonal variations but over time should even out.

Our three new chicks bask in the sunshine but no luck with the fourth egg



Our proud parents watch over their new brood

The fourth egg has not hatched and cannot be seen in the nest. The female osprey has stopped incubating so the egg must not have been viable. However, on a much brighter note, we have three bouncy healthy looking chicks in the nest and they are growing at a phenomenal rate!

Only one week ago we could barely see their tiny heads reaching up for food. Since then they have almost doubled in size! They have grey down covered bodies and stumpy wings with the characteristic black eye-stripe prominent on their faces.

This phase of their life cycle could be classed as their ugly phase, often almost reptilian in facial expressions and mannerisms as they lurch at each other in chick squabbles from time to time. In just a very short period they will begin to get their fledgling feathers and they will gain their handsome colouring.

We are currently having a summer of extremes in Tweed Valley, from the washout spring, (thankfully, before the chicks hatched), to the sudden heatwave. The female now has the greatest concern to shield the vulnerable chicks from the scorching sun as they can very quickly be affected with heat exhaustion.

Pictures of the new chicks can be viewed on the new FC Scotland Facebook page

A foray of feathered activity around Tweed Valley



Our developing heron chicks at the nest



The heron chicks at Kailzie are really big now and they are becoming adventurous. The nest is a midden of rotting food at the bottom and white splashes of heron droppings all around the edges. This is such a contrast to the tidy and clean nesting ospreys.

The precocious chicks are beginning to wander through the branches of their nest tree to explore their world and possibly to escape the stinky reaches of their home.

While the chicks had gone walkabout we think a chick from one of the other nearby nests in the colony wandered on in to have a nose about and see if there was any free food scraps to be had.

This bird seemed much further advanced in feathering, with the pin feathers broken all along the shafts to reveal almost full primary and secondary feathers.

After a good rummage about in the bottom of the nest, the chick then stalked off to continue wandering though the branches.

The two heron chicks return to the nest when they are hungry and mum is due back to feed them.

When their mum returns to the nest with a full crop of fishy food, both chicks violently descend on her and begin tapping at her beak to regurgitate the food. It is like a wrestling match with both chicks competing to win the prize! Most often it is the largest heron chick that wins and gets a satisfied full stomach and the smaller skinnier chick has to take any scraps dropped into the bottom of the nest. We are hoping that this smaller chick will get enough to survive.

The blue tits have now completed their clutch of eggs and it looks like there are 10 eggs in the nest. The female carefully covers the eggs when she leaves the nest but she has now begun incubating and turning them regularly. When she stands up briefly we get a glimpse of the eggs.

The feeder cameras at Glentress are bustling with hungry forest birds such as flocks of siskins tucking in to the peanut feeders. The camera is set to capture, in superb detail, these little finches teasing the food from between the mesh of the feeders.

Male Osprey taking on his role as "Man of the nest"



One of our Ospreys incubating at the nest

 Things are going really well for our parents to be in Tweed Valley.

The pair have spent the first part of the incubation season going off to hunt for themselves and then taking it in turns to incubate the eggs.

They seem to have a system all worked out and operate a rota which keeps the whole egg incubation period running as a slick operation.

Things have changed this week though - a slight shift in behaviour - the male (White leg ring SS) has started to hunt for his lady!



Female osprey sets of with
our male's latest catch



He has been spotted bringing in headless fish and delivering the substantial body to

the female at the nest.

He must be catching the fish, then perching up close by and feeding on the nutritious brains before passing his bounty over to the female once she is ready for a swap over at the nest.

She takes the fish and flies off with it while he settles down into a spot of incubation duty.

Signs of a great team at work as we edge closer to the appearance of some new chicks.



Heron's lead the way with hungry chicks

Adult Heron feeding chicks

Lots of activity on the heron cam with a full nest. Today we saw the adult heron flying onto the nest, greeted by two hungry chicks who began to tap the adults beak with their own beaks. The adult was then forced to regurgitate its food into the beak of the hungriest chick.

The pond camera is showing the tadpoles free swimming in the little pond outside the centre at Kailzie, whilst the blue tits are out and about feeding up in readiness for the long incubation. The eggs are covered when the female is out and she will begin to incubate once the clutch of eggs is complete.





Ospreys reveal two eggs (at least....)



Osprey at the nest in Tweed Valley



The ospreys have been keeping the number of eggs that they have as a closely guarded secret until yesterday when the female stood up and began to turn the eggs, revealing two, possibly more, but definitely two.

They are taking turns to incubate and seem very settled in their lofty eyrie. This pair are in their ninth year together and have raised 20 chicks to date.

They have laid their eggs very early and so we can expect hatching to be in mid May which are likely to be the earliest chicks to hatch in Scotland this year.

The centre cameras are providing the greatest opportunity to watch them continue their family life in peace in the forest, so that we can really appreciate how they live their lives and raise their families during their annual summer visit to the Tweed Valley.

The great thing about having such a remote nest relayed through camera is that we are seeing totally relaxed and natural behaviour at all times and the only disturbance they generally encounter is another passing, intrusive and nosey osprey on occasion!

A surprise visitor

The osprey watch had another unusal visitor yesterday, as a little fledgeling robin flew into the fishery next door. Jimmy from the fishery brought it over to the osprey centre to find out what it was and to see if it was alright. It was a bit stunned so we put it in the artificial osprey nest outside the building to allow it time to recover and fly off.
The osprey chicks are doing very well, the male brought a feast of fish to the nest and the female fed the raw trout to each individual chick until they were full and sleepy.
The heron chicks are looking huge and glum. A visit from one of the parents did little to raise any activity from them but the parent seemed satisfied that they were ok and left them to continue their treetop trance.

Two osprey chicks!

Two osprey chicks have been seen and the female was removing eggshell from the nest. We are hoping that there is another egg, as the birds keep moving something about, after feeding the chicks, which we hope is another egg. She appears to be continuing to incubate, rather than just shelter her youngsters. These are possibly, the first osprey chicks in Scotland this year. Congratulations to Wales, with the earliest record ever, for osprey hatching in the UK (9th May). If our main nest birds have 3 chicks this year, that will bring them to the grand total of 20 chicks raised since 2004.

Osprey parents could teach heron parents a lesson or two on parenting skills!



Herons are not doing well, with this cold, wet spring. The early April warm weather must have been a bonus for the early nesters in the heronry but the later ones are struggling in this wet weather.

Blue tits are doing well and are the cutest, if not the ugliest chicks ever!!

First chick has hatched

The first osprey chick has hatched today. The female was seen removing egg shell from the nest and peering down to feed the youngster. The nest is still built up with sticks around the edges, so we do not yet know how many eggs there are or even how many chicks have hatched but there is at least one.

The brand new heron HD cam is now showing live pictures from the nest in the heronry. There has been great drama with the parent birds choosing to remain absent through some very bad, wet, spring weather. The cold chicks set upon the youngest one in the nest and viciously attacked it, repeatedly stabbing the chick on the head and neck. It was not seen in the nest today and so we presume that it has died. The parent bird stayed with the young today and they appeared to be more settled.

The blue tits on blue tit cam, now have 6 young in the nest.

A grey squirrel climbed into the open fronted nest box and deposited an acorn!
All the nests are live on camera in Kailzie Gardens Osprey Watch.

Heron Ringing

The heron chicks from two nests in the heronry at Kailzie were ringed today by Tony Lightley, Ronnie Graham and with assistance from his son Ewan.

Three nests have chicks, two of the nests held chicks old enough and big enough to be ringed and one nest had tiny youngsters which were too small to be ringed.

Tony climbed the Scots Pine trees and sent the chicks down to the ground in a bag on ropes. The chicks were then each fitted with a unique BTO ring with serial number. Volunteers from Tweed Valley Osprey Project attended and enjoyed seeing the young chicks close up for the first time.

Heron cam

The heron nest on camera has revealed 4 large chicks in the nest. They are growing up very fast. The bird ringers (Tony Lightley and Ronnie Graham), will be ringing the chicks on Saturday 30th April at 3pm. Visitors are welcome to come along and watch, there will be a charge of £3 per person towards project costs.
Please ring Kailzie Gardens on 01721 720007 to book a place.
Each chick will be fitted with a unique leg ring carrying an identification number. The records will be sent to The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). The birds will wear the rings permanently and at the end of their life, if the corpse is found, the ring number can be sent to BTO and they can check records of where the bird was ringed and what age it was when it died. This research helps to find out about how species such as herons disperse and how long they live for.

More osprey ringing photo's

These photo's were taken on 5th July during the ringing of chicks from Tweed Valley osprey nests.

One of the main nest chicks has been ringed but the larger chick is now fully fledged and was off flying when the ringers arrived. The ringed chick is very well advanced and we can now see the parents encouraging her to leave the nest by withdrawing food supplies. If she wants feeding she is going to have to fly to mum and dad to get some. She is fully capable of flying, her feathers have 100% broken through the quills and she is a powerful youngster. She just needs a bit of courage to take the leap of faith to test out those magnificent wings.

Today Tweed Valley Osprey Project chicks were ringed by Licensed Forestry Commission Conservation Manager, Tony Lightley and his ringing colleague Ronnie Graham.
The larger of the two chicks on the live camera nest fledged a week earlier than expected at the weekend and so was unable to be ringed but the smaller chick was ringed today and was found to be a huge and healthy female.
Other monitored nest sites in the Tweed Valley had their chicks ringed also. The Tweed Valley birds are all doing very well and each year we are seeing successful chicks being raised which will one day come back to the area and raise broods of their own or spread into new territory and increase the distribution of ospreys in the UK.

The two chicks in the video are about half their full grown size now and their feathering has the spangled charecteristic of pale edging to the feathers which distinguishes them from adult birds. They clamber about the nest with confidence, their legs have become sturdier and the facial markings are clearly visible. The video footage was recorded on 20th June.

The chicks will be fitted with leg rings shortly which will be carried out by licenced rangers. The unique leg ring numbers will enable the birds to be identified in the future wherever they may end up.

The male(white SS), has taken to bringing a full fish back to the nest and to proceed to eat it in front of the hungry family. This is unusual as he would normally arrive and hand over the goods to the female who would feed the chicks. He has chosen a good perch on which to feed, just off to the left of the nest which was created during the nest renovation at the start of the season. He is bringing in some huge trout and so there is no chance that the family will go hungry as there is plenty to share all round.

The youngsters are practicing preening their new feathers and mastering the art of projectile excretion out of the nest!

An unwelcome presence at the nest today caused the male to lean protectively over the young who dutifully played their part by dropping flat into the nest, beautifully camouflaged and perfectly still until the perceived danger had past.

Most likely an intruder osprey surveying the nest site.

Growing up.

The two chicks are growing into good sturdy stock. It is incredible to think that only a week or so ago they were two tiny white, fluffy, wobbly heads in the nest. Now they have the spangled colouring and of course their trade mark eye stripes. The parents are doting as ever and fish meals are provided in a steady flow throughout the day.

A short film clip below to show the parent birds feeding the two chicks at the nest and another clip showing alarmed ospreys calling in distress as an intruder osprey flies overhead. The male bird tries to let go of his fish to deal with the intruder but the fish is firmly stuck to the spicules on his foot. He then flies off to chase the imposter taking the fish with him.

Second chick hatched!

Today the second chick hatched, much to the delight of the visitors at Glentress Osprey Watch. When the camera first came on at 10am, the female stood up and turned the two remaining eggs and then settled back down again with the hatched chick beneath her.

At 10.30am she stood up again and revealed a second chick which had just hatched!

Both chicks are fine and healthy and the parents seem very relaxed as family life seems to be playing out in idyllic fashion so far this season.

We could very well have a third chick tomorrow but if not it will be very soon after, hopefully.