The silence is deafening, not least because we haven't even had sound* for a week or two, let alone an osprey on the nest.
*This is to reduce demand on the bandwidth, along with turning off the Feeder cam stream. It seems that the reason for the reduced bandwidth cannot yet be fathomed.
But who knows what the month of May will bring? First-time returners are due and there are reports of ospreys flying up thru the country. Hang in here, everyone!
Carnyx Channel page ~ click LIVE NOW
But it hasn't always been so live:
Then back:
IMAGICAT
scylla said:
CRINGER pretended:
"I quake in my boots before I continue about 'Sausage Tuesday'."
Just to spite you I could pretend that you're not allowed to digress any more... but I would incur the ire of everyone else here, and I'd have to leave :o :o :o
In any case, I want to hear about Sausage Tuesday, the first episode was a hoot !!! ;-D
I fear the worst about the length of this and promise to try and keep it brief.
Ok, ok, to finish the story about Sausage Tuesday, I need to take you back about 3 weeks prior to this. Some may remember the newspaper articles about The Beast of Bodmin? It was the story of a phantom wild cat a number of people claimed to have sighted, especially on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Not to be outdone, about 3 weeks before Sausage Tuesday, the local Abernethy newspaper reported a sighting of a panther like creature in the area. Over the next few weeks more people reported sightings. It became local front page news.
Saturday is volunteer change over day. Vols who have done their 1 or 2 week stint leave, to be replaced by the new contingent. Generally some old faces and friends, together with new faces and friends to be. On the Saturday before Sausage Tuesday I met volunteer Larry for the first time. He was about 45 and as he was living in my chalet for the week I got to know him fairly well quite quickly. He was a fascinating man. A native of Cley in Norfolk, famous as a hotspot for rare birds, he was a wildlife and especially bird man through and through. His knowledge was tremendous and I was in awe of his experience. He had just returned for spending 2 months at a kibbutz in Israel where he had expanded his knowledge and sighting of birds. A wise and impressive man.
Now we can return to Sausage Tuesday. I was still recovering from my camper experience and wondering if I should pop to the local shop to buy some replacement sausages as a gesture of goodwill, when out of the mist came Larry. I had heard him leave early that morning to go for what I rightly assumed was an early morning walk. But this was not the Larry that I had known for a few days. Gone was his usual ruddy complexion. He was deathly pale and every 2 or 3 paces he was nervously glancing over his shoulder and peering into the mist. He looked towards the kiosk, saw me and came over. Fearing he was ill, I asked him if he was ok. Larry said I would not believe what he had just seen. Having just been asked to believe that our Ospreys were sausage thieves I was prepared to believe most things. He said that he had been for his walk and was returning along the single track road from Tulloch Moor, had come off the moor and was about 100 yards into where the forest borders the road when he saw a large shape come to the edge of the forest on his right and then pad its way across the road and disappear silently into the forest the other side of the road. He said he had never seen anything like it. It was silent. It was huge. It walked with purpose. It was a ‘big cat’. He was convinced. I tried to ‘pin down’ where this happened and worked out that it was fairly close to the house where Roy Dennis used to live. Its direction of travel was towards the south of Loch Garten. He asked to borrow a bicycle to get back to the chalet – he didn’t want to walk in case he came across the beast again. He got his bicycle and I decided I had better call the boss. If it was a ‘big cat’ and was headed our way I didn’t want any encounters with any of our visitors or their dogs. I called the boss and he said to leave it to him.
I continued my stint at the kiosk reflecting on quite an eventful morning what with sausages and big cats and admit to being a little more vigilant whenever I heard a noise in the forest around the kiosk. About an hour later the mist at last was starting to clear and I suddenly saw a man running down the road from the direction of the chalets (Boat of Garten) towards me. He was breathless. Panting. He was also very, very pale. He told me he needed to report something. He had been walking in the forest between Lochs Garten and Mallachie when he felt something drip onto his face. He wiped it off, looked at his hands and saw it was blood. He looked up into the tree he was underneath and there, 5 metres off the ground, stuck in the fork of the tree was a dead deer.
An Osprey taking sausages off a BBQ is one thing, but a report of a large cat like creature from a sane man and another of a dead deer half way up a tree was too much of a coincidence. I thanked the man, got directions as best I could for the deer and phoned the boss again. He was just on his way out of HQ with his rifle to walk the area of the first sighting, now he decided to enlist the help of all able bodied RSPB staff in the area. Serious stuff.
At the centre we all stayed calm and went about our normal daily routines welcoming and greeting visitors. Larry arrived for his shift at lunchtime a little subdued, but had sufficiently recovered to be able to keep the Osprey log up to date in the forward hide.
It was shortly after lunch that I got 2 phone calls that resolved the issue. The first was from my boss. He and other colleagues had searched without success the area where Larry had seen the cat, then continued through the forest and eventually had found the deer. When they climbed the tree they found that it was tied to the tree with ropes. Radio contact with other colleagues revealed that earlier that morning a deer had been shot in the forest as part of the legalised cull. The hunt had been on foot and there was no way to remove the deer without transport, so it had been hoisted up a tree while the hunters returned on foot to base and arranged suitable transport.
The second call was a few minutes later from Roy Denis. We had arranged to go out after work to check on Osprey nests in the area. He explained he would be a little late as 1 of his bitches was on heat and he had had to spend some time that day chasing away a neighbouring farmer’s Scottish Wolfhound who had got the scent of his dog and was making continuous unwanted visits to his house!
So ended Sausage Tuesday. I never did get round to buying any replacement sausages.
Some people think Ospreys are a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.
© Scottish Wildlife Trust - Loch of the Lowes
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
A very hasty catchup, hopefully not missed anything BIG!
A dull and wet day.
WW! It kindly moved a stick so's to catch my eye:
NIGHTCAM 22:12
Flyer:
Only an insect found overnight, it crawled around a tuft, I couldn't see where it ended up.
DAYCAM
This was a 2-second max on-off!
Stonechat? EDIT - See below - my glory days are over, it's a REDSTART - thank you ALISON and RICHARD :)
Just to show the time:
I couldn't see its target, if it had one:
123
456
The only quarrel I have with your ID, ALISON, is that it would be more convenient for it to be a Stonechat because that's the word I remembered ;-D
I'm just going thru the day now for birds that didn't catch my eye - this thingummyjig (I'm joking) was there for 25 seconds:
Having a preen:
No more up to 15:53.