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
Wood Pigeons were back a few times during the morning, mainly one at a time but this time together:
Mike B said:Thank you billy.
Ditto!
Ah well, not madly active but I cropped a mini-preen
We had a brief spell of beautiful evening sunshine to celebrate Midsummer's Day:
Video of Unringed Female's Visit to Loch Garten nest today - 22.06.21 - she was there for over 45 mins but edited video down to 6 mins
She looks like the female from earlier in the season (maybe)....
EJ's Memorial Balgavies Loch Ospreys 2023
Drama at late lunchtime! I can't tell who is who yet.
After much crashing & burning, and blood, sweat & tears... The remainder of the Osprey activities until Axel - the only one who could be positively ID'd - finished his fish and flew.
No more activity by nightcam.
An excellent video, Scylla, thank you. It's good to see they are still around in so far as we can tell. I did take a few snips from your vid, but I don't think they really help with id. However, for the record
She is very dark on the forehead
She has a distinctive two points
well, sort of!
Compared with Axel - but the light was all wrong
From 5 May
26 April
8 May
I don't appear to have any of her looking straight at the cam.
Birdie's DU Summaries 2018 https://www.imagicat.com/
Well I've only just seen that MARY had already done a video! But it looks as tho you were watching live, Mary, and produced the "central" period - so at least my retrospective dupe as got the preamble and postamble
SHEILA, nearly all my 2021 season snaps are bulging together out of one folder, I've let it get completely out of hand, there are thousands and I can't find anything.
Searching the folder for RSPB LochGarten helps, since I had the sense to (almost always) add the nest name onto the snap titles.
Not a full frontal, but it does confirm your snap showing what high-contrast breast markings Mistle has - while doing the vid last night I wondered if it was the relatively sunny day that made the female's breast look lighter:
In view of the activities we witnessed yesterday, which the camperson did their level best to follow for us - can you understand why the cam was left on this setting all night? The dead treetop wasn't fully included until 10:43 this morning.
Signed, MsCurmudgeon x
A nasty rainy day. The Wood Pigeon visited, as it did yesterday but I forgot to post that snap - this is today's (25th):
Cam is down. I've written to Peter Carnyx.
It looks as tho it went down at 14.21, and still isn't back, although it was a beautiful day then!
It then reverts to vertical colours before getting the whilygig with a frozen view behind.
Peter replied "We're letting the computer do some updates". It's still buffering at the mo, I'm sure to forget to turn the downloader back on