It has been beautiful here over the last few days. The sun is shinning but our female has become increasingly restless on the nest. She frequently gets up to rotate the eggs and listen for any signs within. It’s easy to tell that the female is aware of the chicks moving and calling inside the eggs as she will tilt her head at an angle and listen intently.  Unfortunately there are still no cracks appearing in the eggs yet, but there is still plenty of time and hopefully over the coming week the eggs will hatch and we will be blessed with a few osprey chicks. The male continues to add sticks to the nest, bring trout for the female and clear the nest of any fish remains to keep it tidy.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that the eggs are fertile and we will have at least one healthy chick this season.

Over the last few days at Loch of the Lowes we have been able to watch otters swimming about in front of the hide, ruddy ducks which have arrived at the loch, and roe and fallow deer going for a swim on the loch before changing their mind half way and swimming back again!  We also had an eventful night on Monday when a duckling found all alone at the side of the road was brought into the centre. It must only have been a few days old being so tiny and it started to follow us around the centre!  We noticed a mother with two other ducklings outside and decided to attempt to get her to adopt our orphan are bring it up as her own. It was touch and go for a few minutes as the mother ran away when she noticed our presence. Our little duckling came running back to us and stayed by our side whilst stretching its little neck as high as possible to call out for its mummy. The mother slowly built up her confidence responding to the calls and returned with her own two ducklings.  Our orphan ran across, they touched beaks and it joined onto the back of the line and was successfully adopted by its new family! So if you visit the reserve and notice a smaller duckling a bit unsteady on its feet, following two bigger ducklings then you will know that this particular little fellow was adopted by a very caring mother!