We still haven’t seen Blue 44 but we have been watching his parents closely and their behaviour suggests that he is alive and well and displaying his mother’s trait of being very independent.

This afternoon our male brought a fish into the nest which our female promptly took off him and disappeared with it towards Craiglush, which is exactly where the satellite data puts Blue 44. Our male reappeared a couple of hours later with the tail end of the fish so something has eaten the rest and our female’s behaviour suggests it wasn’t her because…

Also this afternoon, to great excitement in the hides, she fished right in front of us. She made three fishing attempts, all unsuccessful before disappearing out of sight. This is a pretty rare event as she normally doesn’t fish in that area so it was a real treat for everyone watching.

Both mum and dad are staying in the same area and appear to be working a ‘triangle’ of perches where they can see both lochs and are constantly looking and watching downwards rather than over to the water as you would normally expect.  This also suggests Blue 44 is alive and just not coming back to the nest.

Our cheeky male tried mating with our female again this morning, he’s clearly not getting the message that she’s not interested and will be leaving soon!

There has been a lot of intruder activity again this morning which may be one of the reasons Blue 44 hasn’t returned to the nest. Excitingly last night’s intruder, White 91, has been identified as Welsh Osprey born in 2009 at the RSPB Glaslyn Project. When she was ringed she was assumed to be male as she was smaller than her sisters but it looks like that was wrong. She has lost her BTO ring which is unusual but has made her easier to identify. Will she return for another visit? We know our colleagues down in Wales are delighted another of their birds has returned, although why she’s all the way up here is anyone’s guess.

In other news (yes there is some) those of you still watching the webcam will have spotted the Great Tits making an appearance, including some chicks, which is probably what Blue 44 and his mum were watching all those times.

There’s a group of juvenile Goldeneye on the loch practicing their diving and our Great Crested Grebe chicks are thriving and are now both off their parent’s back and swimming independently.

Lindsey