Hello it’s Lindsey on the dayshift doing the blog today; we’ve let Emma go home for some well earned, and much needed, sleep, as she is on nightshift again tonight.

After yesterday’s excitement and confusion it’s all gone quiet with the ospreys with our nightwatch reporting an unusually quiet night with our female asleep most of the time. We’re still none the wiser with what has happened with the egg or not. She’s certainly showing no signs of incubating or nesting behaviour. Yesterday afternoon she went into the nest and did a couple of classic ‘chest dives’ where chest first she snuggled down into the nest cup but she didn’t do it for long at either time. He has been out of sight for most of the day while she’s been off the nest for long periods of time.  He has brought in a couple of fish including a good sized trout and there have been a couple of mating attempts but considerably less than in previous days.

In non-osprey news (hard to believe but there is some!) the loch has settled down with the birds pairing off. The Great Crested Grebe have stopped displaying and are now treating us to shows of synchronised diving. We’re also seeing more and more single birds suggesting the females are on the nests. Beating them all to it, one of our mallard females appeared this morning with eight chicks paddling along behind her. This is very early and we wonder if the unseasonably warm weather last month confused them.

At the feeders our Red Squirrels continue to entertain us with their antics and we’re regularly seeing Yellowhammer and an unusual white headed Chaffinch. The whole area is gradually breaking into bloom with the trees and plants showing green leaves and early flowers.

If you’re thinking of visiting us, this weekend would be a great time as we have a number of events on. On Saturday we have ‘Crafty Kids’ and on Sunday ‘Amazing Ospreys’ for the children and through out the whole weekend there’s an Optics Fair where you try and buy binoculars and telescopes with all profits going to SWT, see our events page for more details.

And finally ‘hello’ to all the blog followers we met today, it’s always great to meet you and nice to know who it is who’s reading this!