Main Nest
It was an exciting day at the nest today, with plenty of comings and goings from the family. When the cameras came on this morning the female adult and the female chick were both present on the nest with a fish each and where heartily tucking into their breakfast. The young male soon joined them and his mother then fed him. Even though he is now capable of independent flight he still reverts to the behaviour of a younger chick for a feed. Eventually the two females flew off and the young male continued to finish off the remainder of his mother’s fish. Once he was full he then took off.
Sometime later the adult female returned with a fish and began to show signs of agitation, she left her fish and flew off. Perhaps she was giving chase to an intruder bird. After a while another female landed at the nest, it was an adult and her markings in the chest were very strikingly different to our female bird she looked about furtively and stole the fish!
The adult male arrived at the nest and stayed for a while but he didn’t bring any fish and the rest of his family were not around.
The whole season of highlights for this family of ospreys is now being shown on DVD in the centres. It begins when the females first arrived back in the spring through to this years chicks taking to the wing. This recorded footage has superb sound quality and the birds every call and movement can be heard, all set to the backdrop of forest noises and at times howling winds.
Windows On Wildlife
The small mammals trapping events at Glentress Forest were a great success and proved to be very popular with the public who attended. There is now a highlights DVD showing at the centres with footage of the mammals trapped and released at these events. We caught bank voles, short tailed field voles and wood mice. After a brief stop over in the traps they were then released unharmed back to their territories, most were quite reluctant to go before they had eaten as much of the lovely food we had left for them.
Because of the success of these events we have decided to run a few more to be held at Kailzie Gardens after the Glentress Osprey Watch closes for the season.
Details below.
Small Mammals Mystery Tours. 17th August, 25th August and 28th August.
Meet at Kailzie Gardens Osprey Watch Centre at 10.00am.
No Booking required.
Come along and see which small mammals we have caught in the live traps. A chance to see, mice and voles close up and then release them back to the wild. All children must be accompanied by an adult.
Admission fee. £3 per adult, £1 per child over 5 years, under 5’s free.
This specially reduced fee for the events will allow entrance into the osprey watch centre and the gardens.
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