Our oldest chick will be 4 weeks old tomorrow and we are delighted with their progress. LM12 has increased the frequency of fish deliveries (compared to last week) and more often than not we spend our opening hours showing the public sleeping chicks on the nest.

With the long daylight hours, the longest of which will be on Thursday (mid summer solstice). LM12 is able to fish for the nest in the daylight, roughly between 4am and 11pm! This is an incredible advantage for the osprey to provide fish at all times of the day.

Some of you have had concerns that LM12 has not been providing enough fish for the nest and that LF15 should be fishing too. LF15 will not leave the nest for much more than a comfort break until the osprey chicks fledge around mid July, so it is all up to LM12.

When LM12 makes fish deliveries outside of opening hours, the visitor centre staff will not be aware of the frequency of these deliveries and so we don’t get the full picture either. However, we know from people that visit the hide, from the ospreys behaviour, and the chicks growth rate that LM12 is actually doing a great job.

If the chicks are sleeping, chances are they’ve had a good feed. If the chicks and LF15 are calling for food then they are hungry. The chicks begging calls prompt LF15 to do her begging calls, which prompts LM12 to go fishing. Today he has brought in two fish, one of which was a salmon.

Thank you for your concerns and I hope that you continue to watch our web cam day, and night!

Emma Castle-Smith

Visitor Centre Assistant Manager

p.s.

I’d also just like to make it clear that we are running the visitor centre 7 days a week at the moment and with a team of just 3 staff and lots of wonderful hard working enthusiatic volunteers. We are happy for you to get in touch with us about our osprey and other wildlife on the reserve but please allow us the time and grace to do our jobs effectively at this very busy time of year.

Our priority is welcoming the visitors to the centre first and blogs/social media second. I hope you can understand this. In the mean time please pay us a visit to the centre, we would be delighted to answer any and all questions.