Our female Osprey is still alone on her nest, patiently awaiting the arrival of her regular mate. Despite all the drama of intruders she still has control of her nest, having seen off her female rival.

A lot of people have asked us what will happen if her usual mate doesn’t turn up ( after all he is not a young bird either) , and we can only hope we don’t have to face this situation this year- we certainly haven’t given up hope of our regular males’ return just yet.

In our experience with Ospreys , there are usually young males around early in the season looking for their first opportunity to mate, who will be willing to step up to ‘second husband’ role if necessary. It is not unknown for female ospreys to start flirtations or even mating with these young males, whilst waiting for their usual mate’s arrival. This is natures way of ensuring she doesn’t miss the opportunity to breed this year altogether.

Obviously the later our males arrival, the more chance of this type of new relationship developing, though so far our female has not shown much interest in these ‘young pretenders’.

We would all dearly love to see the ‘romantic’ reunion between our female and her long term partner, but in reality we would be happy to have a stable breeding couple on the nest this year and healthy chicks, whoever the parents.