Our young Osprey Blue 44 has had an exciting day today, with his longest flight so far at  about 10minutes, and some intruders dramas to deal with.

Earlier today his mother took a very strong dislike to a heron which flew near the nest and choose to land in the reed bed to the right of the nest near the inlet. She continued to dive bomb the other bird on the bank several times and harass it until it left this end of the loch. Even though the Heron was no longer a risk to her adult sized chick, and it isn’t really a competitor for fish (targeting smaller species), after 22 years on this nest, our resident female osprey isn’t letting anyone muscle in on her territory.

Our young Osprey has been sitting a lot this afternoon on the dead tree in front of and to the left of the nest ( as seen from the hides), which is also one of his mothers favorites perches. He was sitting there happily around half past two, when an intruder osprey few over. His mother was on the nest, mantling furiously and alarm calling, but the intruder took another fly-past and actually dive-bombed our chick. He promptly took off and flew ‘home to mum’ on the nest, where after mum took to the skies to chase away the intruder.

No one knows why adult ospreys sometimes show this kind of aggression to young birds: mostly unrelated ones, but in rare cases, such as recently at Rutland water, even related chicks. We have been told that adult ospreys can be quite ruthless and aggressive towards juveniles in Africa during winter too- but this behaviour is still a mystery.

 Our Osprey Satellite tracking page has been updated today and you can see the data points still cluster mainly around the nest here at Loch of the Lowes. I have put the data points that shows the furthest movement from the nest for each day on the map ( remember the tag only records a snapshot every hour or so , so it may have missed some short flights).  You will also be pleased to know that our second tagged Osprey chick Blue YD has fledged successfully this week- we will be posting data from his tag when he leaves n migration to protect the nest location.

Click here to see the Satellite Tracking page

http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/things-to-do/osprey/