On the 15th of March the 360 cam went live and an Osprey landed on the nest. It didn't take too long for a pair to begin bonding:
Male: BlueAX6 "Axel" - Ringed at a nest in Glen Affric on 1st July 2016, he was the only survivor of 3 eggs.
Female: Unringed "Mistle" - a very beautiful specimen, according to our long view.
(Unofficial names - LG will decide on names if deemed appropriate.)
This inexperienced couple is bonding well - Axel has been a good provider, they're both enthusiastic nestbuilders, the only element that requires more work is the mating technique.
EDIT 01 JUNE - Axel & Mistle deserted the nest in May, apparently spooked by intruders. As there has been very little activity since then, this thread will continue to the end of the 2021 season, unless dictated otherwise by ospreys.
Photo ©RSPB LochGarten
Cam info kindly provided by Peter @ Carnyx.tv:
There is an identical camera and microphone on this nest as the HD camera at Llyn Clywedog (Osprey). However the nest was struck by lightning. This took out the camera, the camera power supply and the WiFi link back to the centre. We managed to replace the power supply and Wifi but it was too late in the season to climb to the nest.
IMAGICAT
JaneV said:And what a whopper !
Sheila said she had been calling fr an hour. This takes some energy. = the interpretation is she can see him with a fish and wants it. The fact that it is a 'whopper' suggests that he was eating his fill before delivery - still leaving much to her. I would not be surprised if she returns a little later with part of the fish and allows him to take it - just like yesterday. The more I see the more I like this new 'couple'. Eggggsactly when she will lay her first egg is not known. But the feeling in my waters is that we will not have long to wait.
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.
scylla said:
BTW - re Daily Update - when I did the new thread on the first of the month I thought about it and decided that we'd give Axel and Mistle a chance to settle in and start DUs in June if all went well.
Mind you, there are so many more nests on cams to keep track of these days, I'm finding it very hard and am spending more time struggling with tech, trying to keep them all going, than reporting
Strangely enough the same thought had been crossing my own mind. I am not sure why the daily updates stopped. Surely there is enough action now to desrve at least a weekly update? To be changed to daily later if the action and posts suggest this?
Life with ospreys is so different when we were starting to follow them more than ten years ago, and as you say Scylla, there are so many other lovely nests, with super cams and cam work, and proactive folk it is difficult to stay with just one nest now. Dyfi have just have, and it's on-going a problem with KS8 the Clywedog chick. I'm surprised the eggs survived.
Yep, that really was a whopper of a fish. No wonder Mistle has been calling for over an hour waiting for it to come! He certainly took his fair share, but it was huge.
15.08 the cam moved slightly to the left - I wondered whether it was to try to improve the focus, but it didn't do any good and we were left with campost and half a nest
Axel left 16.24,
This is the current odd view
Rather than what we had earlier
Birdie's DU Summaries 2018 https://www.imagicat.com/
Here's Mistle with her fish, here's Axel wanting it, here's Mistle not letting it go... yet...
He's got it now... flown.
scylla said:Here's Mistle with her fish
Not insignificant but it looked smaller when Axel flew with it:
At 19:00:36, while AX6 was on the nest, a blue ringed Scottish bird landed. Unfortunately, the Osprey stood on far right of the nest and its Darvic ring wasn't able to be seen.
The clearest capture I could get
©Loch Garten/RSPB/Carnyx