Hello bloggers, 

It looks like things are all going swimmingly in the past week. So long as the eggs are not too fussed in being part of a grape crushing re-enactment performed by Axel! I must apologise and say that I have been late to the game with the osprey intruders. I know it is difficult to believe that I am not constantly peering out the windows in awe of these birds. Believe me, that is what I want to be doing but the team have been rather busy with the Cairngorms Big Nature Weekend. We hosted a tree-climbing event that gave people the opportunity to experience the forest from an ospreys perspective and ran a spoken word event that was connecting people with the amazing pine landscape. In between that, I was corresponding with Sheila and Alison about the intruder 308 that came onto the nest last Tuesday! We saw these floating talons and Alison tells me that this bird visited the nest last year and was ringed in 2019 in the Tweed Valley. This could be a very young female by the speckling on the chest and looking for somewhere to nest in the future. 

This wasn't the only intruder we had this week with a goosander looking to find somewhere to stop off in the forest and being quite surprised to see our female sitting on his perch! 

We also had a third egg appear on the 10th of May which was eggciting! I know some of you think my pessimism unwarranted but what can I say, it has brought me good luck so far, so I think it must continue. Here is the photo of the female showing us all the eggs for the first time. 

It has been very windy this last week and it has looked like watching an osprey riding a little spaceship with how much the tree has been moving in the wind! Even though there have been high winds it looks like Axel has been managing to keep feeding the female insatiable appetite for fish. This is looking really promising that they are getting into a rhythm with their season and we would be expecting the first egg to hatch around the 8th of June if all goes well. 

Let me know if there are any other events you think I have missed from the past week that should get an honourable mention!