Good afternoon all,

Events at the nest today:

As you will have been aware our osprey pair have not been incubating their eggs very much for a few days now.

This morning it looked like there were no eggs in the nest at all. After carefully scrutinising our 24 hour recordings we caught a very brief glimpse yesterday of one of the adult birds dropping material on top of the eggs. This was done so quickly we had to re-run the footage about six times to make sure we had observed correctly.

We therefore took the decision to send a qualified tree climbing staff member up the tree to investigate.

As we did not want to cause a lot of disturbance to the ospreys we timed our retrieval of the eggs when they were off the nest, after a bit of searching he found and retrieved the eggs from the nest.

The eggs will now be sent for analysis to see what we can find out from them. As soon as we have any definite news we will let you know.

Other wildlife at Loch of the Lowes:

Today on the loch there were two great crested grebes, three mute swans, forty Canada geese, twenty eight mallards, four sand martins and on the edge of the loch in front of the hides there were three blackcap chicks being fed by there parents.

At the feeding station today there were four pheasants, two great spotted woodpeckers, two blue tits, a long-tailed tit, a coal tit, about fifteen chaffinches, three greenfinches, four siskins, a yellowhammer, a jay, two red squirrels and a woodmouse.

Conservation work and sightings on Perthshire reserves:

The conservation team is currently controlling bracken (Ptiridium aquilinum) on two of our reserves, on one to encourage regeneration of Juniper (Juniperus communison) and on another to conserve the population of wild flowers and other meadow flora.

Bracken is found nearly all over the world, growing 1-3 meters tall it can easily swamp an area, both in height and density; bracken is allelopathic to some plants, this means it lets out chemicals that keep them from growing.

The control of bracken is an on going job throughout the summer months but is a satisfying task, knowing that the Juniper and wild flowers will benefit greatly from our efforts.

Perthshire Reserves Conservation Team