Poole Harbour Osprey Project MAY to end of 2020 season

Just before 09:00 this morning, visitors!  Under 10 minutes from first appearance of vehicles to departure of peeps, glitchily fast forwarded:

Otherwise, just corvids in 'n out during the morning - THEN !!!

(Still very freezy stream.  And I got worn out trying to follow the stages so gave up and skipped to the end... in the end )

It rained lightly from 02:00-ish onwards, the fire continued thru'out:

Still alive seconds before daycam:

Are we sure it was controlled burning ! hope so - and not the previous walkers
What wonderful creatures moths are ..........
Thank you Scylla

Until Alison gets here and tells us the actual story, I'll speculate that they have to remove trees and possibly shrubs from the area in order to maintain the land as heathland. Otherwise it would eventually become forest, and the type of heathland at RSPB Arne and around other parts of the Poole Harbour area is some of the last remaining in the UK. Hope that is vaguely right!

Edit:   And that heathland has its own set of flora and fauna.

I have no idea or information, I’m afraid, but your hypothesis sounds very good!

Alison, My speculation was based on remembering that Arne has at least a couple of times, possibly more, in the last 6 or 8 years offered people free Christmas trees if they would join in clearing evergreens from the heath and they could take one home with them. There was some explanation then which I vaguely recalled. Arne was a bit far for us, plus we never had our own tree 'til last year. We spent every Christmas prior to last year away from home, mainly with my inlaws. They came to us last year because we now have a house big enough for visitors. Sensible folk our age are downsizing, we up-sized!  Being a bit slow to follow trends--lol!

That’s true about Arne and the pine-pulling, which nets them good money and helps keep the heathland as it is. Not sure if they will be able to do it this year though. Also, the webcam nest is not at Arne, but there is heathland in the webcam nest area. The burn was probably just routine maintenance of the site, but I am only guessing.

Yes, I remember you saying the nest was not the one viewable at Arne (presumably on private land?), and yes, it did look like intentional maintenance and not just a fire made by yobs. I doubt yobs would have worked that hard, chopping down all those tall bushes or small trees which the people were dragging to the fire (and which Scylla's captured video shows very well--thanks, Scylla!).

If it was a deliberate fire then it would have been all over the local paper, and I haven't sen anything to that effect.
Also mention would have been made elsewhere as the fire service would have been in attendance.

I was very confident that it was "land management", therefore called it "controlled" - and there was more of the same, only moreso, today: