Fledged Ospreys and unusual sightings

We were delighted that the first and boldest chick fledged from the nest on the 14^th July and a couple of days later a second chick was practicing the art of being airborne by flying from one side of the nest to another.

The male bird delivered a large brown trout to the nest where one chick took command of the situation by taking the whole fish from his talons and proceeded to feed itself. Shortly afterwards the female flew onto the nest with a fish in her talons and began to feed the chick that already had a fish of its own. Old habits die hard! The chick didn’t complain and gracefully accepted the proffered morsels, maybe keeping the fish in its own talons as a snack for later.

The female flew off after a while only to return later with a change of heart and snatch the fish away from the chick and fly off with it.

On the 17^th July, one lonely chick was seen in the nest while all the family were away. Perhaps this one was hoping that a sympathetic parent may pop by and deliver some dinner. This is the time of tough love and chicks can be left without food for a while to drive them on to begin to fend for themselves.

All chicks are now fledged and are gaining superb flying practice and for a change the Scottish summer weather has not been all about deluge and torrential rain, but we Brits are great at moaning about the weather and this seasons chicks have had to contend with searing heat, as we have a proper summer sunny period. This brought about a period of inactivity and the weather was too hot for osprey chicks and volunteers alike!

At cooler times during this balmy summer, conditions have been excellent for fishing and bumper supplies must mean fit and healthy birds getting into prime condition, in readiness for that all important first migration journey which is looming in the not too distant future.

Sightings of a New osprey family in town!

Innerleithen games week parade was visited by a new family of ospreys in town, marching down the high street! A couple of pupils from St.Ronan’s Primary school that had been involved in the osprey project this season dressed up as ospreys and pushed their eyrie along the road complete with little brother as a cute osprey chick peeking out of his eggshell!

They won third prize in the fancy dress competition and we are very proud of them here at the Tweed Valley Osprey Project. Very Well Done. Great costumes!

First Chick fledged.

On Sunday 14th July, one of the young ospreys at the main nest became quite bold and flew up on to the perch beside the nest. It was more like a flapping hop than a true flight, really. It remained perched there for quite some time while the other two chicks remained in the nest, seemingly unimpressed by the show of sudden adventurous activity. A great deal of wing flapping and wing stretching has been taking place at the nest, as the young birds flex their soon to be tested flight muscles. The more they practice and exercise, the stronger they will become which will make the first flights less feeble and more purposeful which would give a young bird greater confidence.

The boldest chick was clearly ready to make that move from flightless to flight, as having remained on the perch for quite a while, it decided to take the plunge for a maiden trip. The volunteers on duty at the centres of Kailzie Gardens and Glentress Forest, missed seeing it go but they were faced with the obvious fact that the camera clearly only showed that there were now two chicks in the nest.

This can be a worrying time but the chick is the right age, weight and ready to go. The less brave siblings must follow soon. The male bird (white leg ring SS) came into the nest bearing a good sized fish and began to feed the two remaining young birds later in the afternoon. The young explorer did not return for a feed, perhaps it was enjoying the newly found freedom as the world suddenly opened up and the surroundings of the nest became shrunken as the open countryside beckoned for further exploration. Then again it could have been so alarmed at the surprise flight that it was clinging by its talons, to a nearby branch of a tree and wondering how it was ever going to return back to the nest.

It did manage a return flight later in the day and landed confidently on the nest, giving the appearance that it had done all this flight sort of thing before!

On Monday 15th July, two chicks and their mum were at the nest and the errant fledged chick was off exploring again.  There is only a day between the ages of the three chicks but it doesn’t always follow that they will all fledge together or on consecutive days. The chicks will go when they are ready and sometimes need a fair bit of encouragement from mum and dad. They will try to starve the remaining youngsters from the nest so that they will fly when they are hungry enough to get to dad with a tasty fish.

The family will use the nest regularly as a feeding place and a place to safely rest during the next month but as all the chicks master flight, there will be longer periods away from the nest, as they become fitter and lose the baby fat from their bodies to become finely tuned muscles.

This time of year in the Scottish Borders is a great time to try to spot families of ospreys out on flying and hunting trips together. It is good to keep a look out over any stretch of water where there is good fishing, including the River Tweed, as birds patrol the territory finding favourable hunting areas.

Please do report any sightings of the ospreys to us, especially if the leg ring lettering and colours are visible and make a note of them. Please also note whether the coloured ring (Darvic ring) is on the birds left or right leg and if possible take a photograph. We can then find out which bird it is and where it is from.

Here  are some more photos from the ringing of the ospreys last week and the children of St.Ronan's Primary School who came to see the ringing.

St Ronan's kids are treated to osprey ringing

On Monday 1st July, the chicks from the main osprey nest were ringed. The adult birds, (white leg ring SS) and his un-ringed female are in their tenth season at the nest and this batch of three chicks brings their total number of chicks raised in ten years to 26.


Tony Lightley with pupils from St.Ronan's Primary School



The children from Class P4/5 have been working all summer term on a celebration book for the ospreys 10th anniversary and to thank them for all their hard work and enthusiasm, a special trip was organised by Forestry Commission Scotland to take the children to see the young ospreys being ringed, as they are now six weeks old and soon will be making their first flight.

The chicks were lowered to the forest  floor where Tony Lightley, (Conservation Manager for FCS) and his colleague Ronnie Graham put the leg rings on to the birds, weighed them and measured them. The birds were fitted with unique BTO rings on their right legs, which carry a serial number which identifies the bird and a large Darvic ring on their left leg which is an alpha numeric identification ring which can be read at a distance through a telescope or binoculars, so that birds can be tracked over their lifetime to study their movements and progress in the future.



The class of P4/5 children were further treated, in that Tony arranged for the leg rings to have lettering that relates to their class number. So, the chicks were given rings with the letters CL4, CL5 and the third chick CL6, as the pupils will be moving into Class 6 next term.  It will be lovely if we hear of these birds in the future, whether they return to this area to breed when they are old enough, or if we receive sightings of them wherever they may turn up.  The young chicks will make their very first migration to Africa by the end of this summer, once they have mastered flight and fishing techniques, which their skilled parents will teach them.



Ronan Ted, (the school mascot ) gets a surprise visit too!



The production of the tenth anniversary book has been the joint project between Tweed Valley Osprey Project and the Friends of Kailzie Wildlife, working with the P4/5 pupils of St. Ronan’s Primary School and we received a grant from Awards 4 All to produce 10,000 copies, which will be available from August.

The school have a mascot called Ronan which is a little teddy bear, decked out in school uniform complete with school tie. Ronan Ted accompanied the children on their visit and was treated to a surprise of his own. Tony took him up to the nest for a quick look when he put the chicks back after they had been ringed!



Three ringed chicks back in the nest after ringing.



The children thoroughly enjoyed their visit, it was a very special day out to see such a wonderful osprey family and a thoroughly deserved opportunity for children who have immersed themselves in this project work with so much enthusiasm.

Depute Head, Jan Lister who accompanied the children on their visit said, ‘’ Today has been a great opportunity for the children to see at first hand , the splendour of these young ospreys before they embark on their remarkable journey to West Africa. In school for the last few weeks the children have been learning about the conservation of these remarkable birds and their successful return to breed in the Scottish Borders. Today, that learning was brought to life and has given them many memories which will last a lifetime. We are very grateful for having had this opportunity”.



St.Ronan's Primary School guest blog for Tweed Valley Osprey Project

The children from class P4/5 visited the Osprey and Nature Watch centre at Kaizlie Gardens to see the ospreys on camera. They got together back at school and wrote a collective piece about thier visit to share with the public on this blog.

Below is their account of the visit:

On June the 6th, P4/5 from St Ronan’s Primary School in Innerleithen went on an adventure to Kailzie Gardens to see what happens at the amazing Osprey Centre.

We saw live footage showing us ospreys, blue tits and herons but the most important thing for us were the ospreys because we are learning about them in our topic.

 We saw three baby osprey chicks being fed by the mum. She was giving them raw fish that the dad had just caught fresh from the river. Their mum tore off tiny little scraps of fish, the right size for the osprey chicks, and the size would be dependant on the age of the chicks.

The chicks got fed one at a time, getting equal amounts. They didn’t push and shove, they waited patiently, they took turns to feed. They were very civilised. The chicks had a wee sleep after their meal and mum got to eat her share.

Dad came back to eat last after the chicks and mum. He took what was left and flew off the nest to finish all that was left, including the head and the brains. It is very nutritious! The ospreys are really good parents - we saw that the chicks were never left alone.

We saw the chicks exercising by stretching their wings and moving around the nest. Another reason the chicks move around the nest is to move to the edge of the nest to poop. They poop over the edge to keep the nest clean.

This also gives Tony Lightley, the man who rings the chicks, an estimate of how old the chicks are because of how far away from the nest the poop goes. The older the chicks, the further the poop! Whenever the birds pooped out of the nest, Di missed videoing it!

The parent birds can get quite bored protecting the chicks so they entertain themselves by moving sticks around the nest. We saw how the nest was as big as a double bed. The nest needs to be that big because the chicks grow so quickly and they are so big when they stretch their wings out, they need the space to not knock each other out of the nest. We saw mum redecorating the nest by moving moss and sticks around. She also moved the moss to keep the nest clean of fish bones and fish blood, to stop diseases.

We enjoyed watching the ospreys. We could highly recommend visiting the centre to watch the live footage, play games and learn new things about the ospreys.

Thank you for reading our blog entry!

P.4/5, St Ronan’s Primary School, Innerleithen

Our hungry osprey chicks have an appetite for life!

Our hungry chicks jostle for food

The chicks are now three weeks old and have begun to move around the nest a lot more. They spend a lot of time sleeping and only become very active once they begin to feel hungry.

When dad arrives with a big fish, the hungry chicks become very animated and jostle for best position in the nest to be fed.

 Mum takes the fish from dad and then in an orderly manner, feeds the chicks with strips of raw fish. She will continue to feed, until all three bellies are full and the chicks begin to shuffle away and lose interest.

Our new osprey family

Once they are well fed and satisfied, they will usually indulge in a bit of stretching, then they empty their bowels over the edge of the nest. When all this activity is over, they snuggle down for another sleepy rest. 

Occasionally, the parents may look skyward with alarm as other birds fly over the nest. Often, this may be harmless passers-by or inquisitive ospreys.

At the young chick stage, this could be a threat if it was a crow or a buzzard but the parents are nearly always nearby.  

If one of the adult birds is not actually sitting in the nest with the chicks, then they are usually on a nearby perch and can protect the young when needed to. The chick response when there is any sign of danger is to lie flat in the nest and play dead. The parents give off high pitched alarm calls and this alerts the chicks to be on their guard.

The chicks usually have darker more orange coloured eyes than that of the parents’ bright yellow irises and this begins to change as they develop. Their faces have changed in appearance and they are beginning to look more like little ospreys, with large hook ended strong beaks for tearing fish and the stripe down the crown of the head, as well as the dark eye-stripe. The wings are showing the first signs of feathering breaking out down the shafts of the pin feather, the mid rib tube, which splits to unfold the genuine feather. The soft grey down of their bodies will also become covered over the coming weeks with their first true feathers, which will be brown in colour with a golden edge to each.

Heron 

The heron nest on camera remains empty and is a sad reminder of the differences between the species, with ospreys being great parents and protective of their young, whereas, the heron’s lack of good parenting led to the two chicks being left in the nest alone and it was raided by an opportunistic crow. Both chicks have gone and then the crow obviously made a return trip to take the third egg too. Although this is a sad occurrence to us, it is nature in the raw and the hapless heron parents will hopefully have better luck next season. The crow family would have full bellies and this struggle of the survival between species is on a grand scale, biologically, likely to balance out over time.  Only if the crow population becomes overly large which can happen, to tip the balance and then conservation action in the form of intervention or population culling could be an option. Mostly nature does a good job of ensuring the survival of the fittest and apart from local fluctuation, populations between predator and prey species tend to reach a balanced proportion.

Blue tit 

The blue tit family have grown and are squashed into the cup of the nest. We have counted nine chicks but often when the parent comes in to feed them, only six or seven gaping beaks can be seen as they all struggle in the small space to reach up for feeding time. It will be a matter of maybe a week or so now until they will fledge and leave the snug little nest box.

Swallow

The swallows have made their nest on the edge of the fishery building at Kailzie, and a camera has been put into position to watch them for the season. The swallow is incubating eggs at the moment and all that can be seen is her head and tail poking out of the mud cup nest. As soon as the eggs hatch, the young chicks will line up at the edge of the nest for feeding and we will be treated to superb views of this little family.

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.