Wigtown Bay Ospreys

Hello, and welcome to the new Wigtown Bay Ospreys Blog on the RSPB Crook of Baldoon's page.

My name is Ian Brown, and I am the RSPB's new Wildlife & Community Officer for Wigtown and the surrounding area in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. This includes the new RSPB reserve at Crook of Baldoon, thus the link from that reserve.

As well as promoting the Crook of Baldoon, one of my main roles, is to act as information officer for the Wigtown Bay Ospreys project. This is a joint partnership project Dumfries and Galloway Council, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, landowners & volunteers, RSPB and SNH.

Live and recorded images of the Ospreys can be seen in the County Buildings, Wigtown.  The visitor centre is open when the Wigtown County Buildings are normally open - 10am till 5pm Monday to Saturday with extended opening on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday until 7.30pm.  The centre will be staffed at key times by myself, my colleague Kelly Hunter, and hopefully a fantastic team of volunteers, most of whom are still to be recruited!

At present the project website wigtownbayospreys.co.uk  needs to be updated, but as the ospreys wait for no man, I thought I would start this blog to keep those avid osprey fans up-to-date.

So a brief summary of the story so far:  

Ospreys having been breeding at Wigtown Bay since 2002. In 2004 CCTV cameras were set up at the nest site, so since then the public has been able to view the birds every summer.

The stars of the show:

H/D our female bird, who has definitely been our resident female since the cameras were set up and she was identified in 2004, although it was probably her from the start in 2002. H/D is known as H/D because these were the letters on her Orange Darvic ring on her left leg. Unfortunately she lost this ring during the winter of 2008/2009, but was still able to be identified by her individual head and breast markings (individual to each osprey like human finger prints), her behaviour and familiarity with the nest site, and confirmed by sharp eyed staff and volunteers who managed to read her BTO metal leg ring on the CCTV camera image. She remains known as H/D despite no longer having the ring which can not be replaced. H/D hatched out near Aberfoyle in 1998.

EP is our current male bird. EP arrived at Wigtown on the 14th April  2007 when H/D's first mate BS failed to return from migration. EP gets his name from the yellow Darvic ring on his left leg, which was attached to him as a chick at the RSPB Abernethy Forest Reserve in 2003. After winning H/D's attention from another unringed male in 2007, EP became our resident male and has fortunately returned and bred successfully with H/D every year since then.

As we will have the full story of the Wigtown Bay Osprey Project on the website, I'll skip tohe life story here, and move on to this year's news....

2011:

EP returned on 25th March, with H/D close behind arriving on the 27th.

H/D laid three eggs on the 14th, 17th and 20th April.

They hatched on the 23rd, 24th and 26th May.

Unfortunately the third chick struggled to break free of the egg membrane, it always seemed very small and weak compared to the others and died by the 30th May. We have had very bad weather during this time which will have impeded EP's fishing.

However since then the other two chicks are both growing fast, and hopefully are now big enough to withstand the continuing poor weather. I saw one of the chicks start feeding itself the otherday and wing exercising has started. Don't they grow quick.

That's all the news for now, more updates as and when things develop. Please follow this blog, and I will attach links to the website once it is updated.

In the mean time, if you are ever in the area come and visit us in person, we have great wildlife as well as ospreys in the surrounding area, and as Wigtown is Scotland's National Book Town, there's plenty of bookshops, cafes and other businesses to explore.

Bye for now, Ian