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osprey update
At the moment it says on the Loch of Lowes diary that one egg has hatched, but in fact there are TWO chicks. They hatched within 12 hours of each other and are about three days old now. As I write this you will not have a chance of seeing them because it is pouring and the mother osprey is not going to get up off them to let them catch cold, but it's supposed to clear up this afternoon, and the dad brings them fish regularly which the mum feeds them. Maybe you have to watch as obsessively as I do to actually catch them in action, but you might get lucky.
The chicks were hatched in an absolutely HOWLING gale. The wind was about 25 mph for about two days, gusting to 40 mph, and it was pouring. The mother just would not budge. I kept expecting the tree to blow over, or the nest to blow apart, but it doesn't (and they built it with their BEAKS.) This bird is really giving me a strange new perspective on motherhood. She is absolutely devoted to these babies; she would die to protect them; and yet if she lost one, she would forget about it and get on with her life. I wish I was as single-minded and as... I want to say unquestioning, but actually I wish I had as much faith. It is like faith. This is what you do; you never doubt that you're doing the right thing; no guilt; no grudges.
Of course, she has raised 40-some children over 20-some years or something like that, so she ought to know what she's doing by now.
Still.
Ospreys are almost exclusively fish-eaters. AND... I learned this yesterday at the visitor's centre... they don't navigate by magnetic bearings. They have some kind of hard wiring in their brain whereby they fly to a preset heading. So, Scottish ospreys currently have a higher mortality rate than Scandinavian ospreys because they reintroduced themselves to Scotland (they had been extinct in Scotland for about 50 years, I think) from Scandinavia in the 1950s, but unfortunately their chicks are pre-programmed to fly to North Africa from Norway, not from Scotland; so the young ospreys migrate to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and die there.
Although clearly they are starting to get the hang of it, as last year one of this osprey's chicks came back and had a one-night stand with her before her regular mate returned. The Times has a rather preachy article mentioning it here.
If you're really keen, there is another osprey cam not far from us at Boat of Garten (the definition isn't as good, though). This one's eggs are due to hatch in another week or so, I think.
The chicks were hatched in an absolutely HOWLING gale. The wind was about 25 mph for about two days, gusting to 40 mph, and it was pouring. The mother just would not budge. I kept expecting the tree to blow over, or the nest to blow apart, but it doesn't (and they built it with their BEAKS.) This bird is really giving me a strange new perspective on motherhood. She is absolutely devoted to these babies; she would die to protect them; and yet if she lost one, she would forget about it and get on with her life. I wish I was as single-minded and as... I want to say unquestioning, but actually I wish I had as much faith. It is like faith. This is what you do; you never doubt that you're doing the right thing; no guilt; no grudges.
Of course, she has raised 40-some children over 20-some years or something like that, so she ought to know what she's doing by now.
Still.
Ospreys are almost exclusively fish-eaters. AND... I learned this yesterday at the visitor's centre... they don't navigate by magnetic bearings. They have some kind of hard wiring in their brain whereby they fly to a preset heading. So, Scottish ospreys currently have a higher mortality rate than Scandinavian ospreys because they reintroduced themselves to Scotland (they had been extinct in Scotland for about 50 years, I think) from Scandinavia in the 1950s, but unfortunately their chicks are pre-programmed to fly to North Africa from Norway, not from Scotland; so the young ospreys migrate to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and die there.
Although clearly they are starting to get the hang of it, as last year one of this osprey's chicks came back and had a one-night stand with her before her regular mate returned. The Times has a rather preachy article mentioning it here.
If you're really keen, there is another osprey cam not far from us at Boat of Garten (the definition isn't as good, though). This one's eggs are due to hatch in another week or so, I think.