Both flying

The second chick took to the wing for the first time on Saturday 10th July. This was after much nervous near takeoffs. She is now coming and going from the nest site regularly and waits patiently for food to be delivered by her parents. Her sister seems to alternate her visits, they rarely come to the nest together. yesterday the younger sister ringed Blue HF was at the nest and she is much bigger than both of her parents, her sister is even bigger than her. It is testimony to the great summer of feeding with good fish supplies that they have grown to such stunning juveniles.

The parents try to ensure that good layers of fat are built up on their young as they will soon need to make their migration journey to Africa. They will lose weight dramatically once they begin that journey and as their muscles tone up.

For now all the family are still here but the female will be the first to leave as soon as she is confident that the chicks are fine to cope alone.

WEX Club and childrens' event.

At Kailzie Gardens there is an RSPB Wildlife Explorers Group for young children to come and enjoy outdoor adventures and learn all about wildlife. The group meets once a month and is led by volunteers from the Tweed Valley Osprey Project and trained, competent volunteer leaders from RSPB.

The next meeting will be held on 8th August and we are inviting all children who would like to get involved to come along. ( Normally it is just for members and there is a waiting list to join).

We are planning to hold an osprey day of childrens events at the osprey centre at Kailzie Gardens starting at 2pm(8th August). Please ring if you would like to book a place for your child on 07908098026.

There will be osprey arty crafts and games, including the chance to take part in creating a giant papier mache osprey head for display at the centre.

We can guarantee that all involved will have a great time!

One of our WEX leaders Aly, is pictured above, holding an osprey chick at the recent osprey ringing event carried out by the licensed Forestry Commission, Conservation Manager , Tony Lightley.

Fledged -finally!

The youngest chick finally fledged a week later than her big sister, this happened on Saturday 10th July. This very powerful but somewhat reluctant chick, finally made the brave jump from nest, wing stretching and flapping to taking to the air for real.

We are happy to see her go, as she was trailing behind in terms of progress compared with her sister who has surprised us all by being super early and precocious in everything that she does.

The chicks will continue to use the nest as base camp so we can still watch them at the nest but there may be times from now on when nobody is at home.

Reluctant to leave the nest.

The younger ringed chick still has not made her first flight as far as we can tell. It is possible that she has had a few flights out of hours of the centre openings. She has many wing stretching sessions and prolonged flapping practice and today clearly lifted about 1.5metres above the nest and took a hasty and wobbly return.
It would seem that her dad is a lot more patient with her than mum. He regularly sits at the nest with her and although they did try the tactic of starving her off the nest which didn't work they have reluctantly continued to feed her .
Her sister was very advanced and flew for the first time a week earlier than expected, she regularly returns to the nest and then leaves again although only to hang about in nearby trees.

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.

Tweed Valley Osprey Chick Ringing

Two osprey chicks ringed yesterday at one of the successful Tweed Valley Osprey Nests.

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.