It’s been a hot and sunny day here albeit a bit muggy and higher up very windy and this afternoon reached the relatively rare ‘no fleece’ weather rating.

There’s been lots of activity on the Osprey nest today with three good fish deliveries and the male bringing in sticks. The Pike at approx 9:49am proved particularly popular as it completely finished with only the skin left on the nest. Normally either the male takes it off to finish or the tail end gets dropped out the nest. He’s been spending some time on the nest today for no obvious reason and she now seems content to let him eat on the nest whereas before he always left. He did come in this afternoon and find an old bit of fish on the nest and started to eat it. She saw this and promptly took it off him and started feeding herself and the chick so there was nothing left for him. The chick has been standing up a lot and flapping its wings which will help strength the flight muscles. It can also now been seen from the hides and this afternoon we had some lovely views of the whole family on the nest.

Great Crested Grebe update – everything seems well, the nest looks solid (as much as it can be made of lilypads) and the birds are taking turns to sit tight on the eggs. Hatching is only days away. On the other side of the loch a Great Crested Grebe pair appeared with their young chick riding on the back of one of the adults, which was fantastic to see as many of them lost their nests earlier in the year due to the loch levels rising.

We’ve also seen a number of Fallow Deer with their spotted calves, it’s amazing how well they blend in to the vegetation, and one of our very young visitors found a Cream Spotted Ladybird. We’ll be sending a record of this to the UK Ladybird Survey, you can do this too if you find a ladybird.

For those of you watching the webcam, it looks like we’ve fixed the problem with the nightcam so should you be able to continue your viewing through out the night.

Lindsey