400!

Our male reached a milestone today with his 400^th confirmed fish delivery of the season. And it was no surprise that it was his favourite – a Brown Trout. Blue 44 had been shouting for a good while before he got fed and made short work of it.

To put into context of other Ospreys Odin at Loch Garten had caught 365 before he left, although he did have more mouths to feed, and Monty down at Dyfi was at 284 at last count so our male’s done good. I know many of you are missing our Osprey webcam so here’s a short clip of Blue 44 scoffing the fish, thanks to Carolyn Taylor for this. http://youtu.be/4olrDqnxgqA

We hope to have all the webcams back up and running this week.

Nuts

Our work to identify individual squirrels continues and a new one has appeared in the last couple of days. We now have six recognisable squirrels regularly visiting the feeders so I thought I’d introduce you to them so when you’re watching the Squirrel webcam you’ll know who’s who.

Brown Tail, a female born this year, is easily our most regular visitor. It’s amazing she’s still so small given how many nuts she eats!

Black Tail, a male also born this year, can be mostly found dominating the bird table behind reception and chasing all the others off.

White Tip, also one of this year’s male kittens. At first look he can be hard to distinguish from Brown Tail as the white tip of his tail is quite subtle, then you realise he’s definitely a male. Unlike Ospreys, Red Squirrels do have external ‘plumbing’ and it’s easy to tell males and females apart.

Blond and Black Tail is an adult female and possibly the mother of some or all of the kittens. She’s affectionately known as ‘Rod’ as her tail reminds us of Rod Stewart’s hair. When it was cold the other day she wrapped her tail around her body to keep warm, it looked very cosy.

Blond Tail, an adult squirrel who we saw a lot at the earlier this year, we don’t know much about this one yet.

Our new girl Skinny Tail is possibly an adult. She’s only just appeared on the scene so we look forward to learning more about her. Although her tail looks similar to Blond & Black Tail’s its much skinner and has a brown tip.

…and its goodbye from him

Our staff migration continues and Darko Ambrozic, one of our residential volunteer rangers, left us on Friday. Darko joined us as part of the ArchNetwork Nature Exchange programme which promotes learning and development in natural and cultural heritage between Scotland and other European countries. Emma has been on a couple of exchanges herself so we were delighted to host an exchange ourselves. On his return to Slovenia Darko plans to set up a wildlife tourism venture in his home town. We look forward to hearing all about. He was also camera shy so I’ve no photos of him at all!

Lindsey