Events from the nest:

Since yesterday’s press release relating to this year’s eggs, our female osprey has once again been the subject of a great deal of media attention. This is further testament to the contribution she has made during her 21 years breeding at Loch of the Lowes to the osprey population by raising awareness of this incredible species on an international level. Here, at Loch of the Lowes, we still consider ourselves very fortunate to be able to see this special bird along with her mate, 7Y, nesting on site; despite feelings of disappointment that the eggs are now highly unlikely to hatch.  Our pair of ospreys are now giving us the opportunity to learn what happens when eggs do not hatch by observing their behaviour over the coming weeks. Viewers can still enjoy live footage on our webcam.

Our ospreys continue to incubate the three eggs with our female sitting on the nest throughout the night as usual. At 5.20am, her mate 7Y returned briefly, but did not deliver a fish or take over incubation. An hour later at 6.14am, our female left the nest while at 6.15am our male arrived to incubate for a period, turning the eggs at 6.26am and again at 7.20am and 8.04am. Later in the morning our female returned to the nest and has since incubated throughout the day.At 11.55am she took a short 3 minute break, but returned to continue incubating. At 1.49pm and 3.17pm, she turned the eggs before settling back down to incubate.

While we are disappointed that we are unable to initiate the satellite tracking project this year, it is our intention to progress with this important study next spring. For more information on the future of our satellite tracking project, follow this link: http://www.swt.org.uk/wildlife/ospreys-at-lowes/osprey-tracking/

To view our press release relating to this year’s eggs, see:

http://www.swt.org.uk/news/oldest-ospreys-eggs-fail-to-hatch/

 Anna

Perthshire Reserves Seasonal Ranger