Llyn Clywedog is a reservoir situated near the B4518 road north of Llanidloes, Powys, Mid Wales. The reservoir is owned and operated by Severn Trent Water, with oversight and regulation by Natural Resources Wales. A sailing club and a very active trout fishery operate on the reservoir. The fishery stock the lake with tens of thousands of trout every year.
In 2004 the Forestry Commission erected an osprey platform; responsibility for this was taken over by Natural Resources Wales and it was eventually occupied in 2014, and has been used every season since then.
In 2023 the unringed osprey known as Dylan returned to the the original nest (Nest 1) for his eighth season as the resident male. Since 2020 the resident female has been Blue 5F(12) (known as Seren - Welsh for Star). She hatched in Rutland in 2012. Previously she had for several years been unsuccessful in attracting the sole attention of a male to a nest at Pont Croesor. The previous unringed female (Delyth) did not return in 2020, and Seren 5F replaced her. In 2020 Dylan and 5F Seren fledged 3 male young, in 2021 (a cold and wet season) only one male fledged, in 2022 one female and 2 males fledged. In 2023 2 males hatched but one (8B1) was predated by a goshawk before fledging. 5F Seren has regularly been seen in Africa in winter for many years - she was last seen in the Gambia on 8 February 2024.
In 2023 5F Seren returned to the nest on 25 March; Dylan arrived on 27 March. Both birds returned to the nest on 28 March 2024.
There is no visitor centre or facilities. The nest can be observed from a temporary hide in a layby off the minor road. There is a footpath close to the nest which is closed and blocked off during the nesting season.
In 2023 a natural nest (Nest 2) was found towards the southern end of the reservoir. From this nest Blue Z5, a 2020 bird from private nest in North Wales and an unringed male produced a single female chick who was ringed 7B9. Z5's father was blue Z1, a 2016 chick from the Dyfi, whose parents were Blue 12 (Glesni) and the unringed Monty. Nest 2 can be seen (with good optics) from the viewpoint at Bwlch y Gle.
The nests is looked after by the area NRW ranger John Williams; he has a blog on this link. There is a more comprehensive history of the site in his blog. John goes well beyond the call of duty to support the ospreys and ensure that the cameras are running etc. John is planning that nest 1 will have one fixed and one PTZ camera this season - the live feeds are on a new link every 12 hours, which is accesible from https://www.youtube.com/user/CarnyxWild . Nest 2 will not have any streaming camera coverage. All images are copyright Natural Resources Wales.
There is an active Facebook group for the nest on this link. The group tries to record all fish deliveries which are collated for analysis.
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24 July - just now...
There's been fierce competition for fish over the past 2-3 days and I keep thinking I'll make time to put some of it on the record but never make it
And now I'm melting and dying to pack up and have a nap and this just happened after Dylan delivered a fish to one of his rabid juvies (there's another on the nest who already has a good fish) - the cam wasn't quite cleared of misty blobs.
Oops - it's a gif and won't post again so I'll have to link it to Imgur.
EDIT
What a lucky bird - for reasons best known to itself, the sibling with the "good fish" suddenly relinquished it and dug out a small leftover from the left side of the nest - so the bereaved osprey was able to take over the "good fish":
IMAGICAT
Some little episodes from JULY 2024 - There were a lot more from earlier months, and more interesting ones that caught my eye but I often didn't have the presence of mind to place a marker (stop/restart), and this cam is slow to access here.
Well wow ! who'd be an Osprey dad ! Very well done Dylan . And thanks for the entertaining video Scylla
09 August
All 3 juvies at breakfish time (I haven't attempted to sync sound):
16 August
I'm getting terrible picture quality on this cam, it may be because of the laptop I'm screen-capturing on - I can hardly read the timeline at all. I've beefed this up a bit - probably a lot. At leat we ca see that Seren's still here.
I didn't see Dylan all day and saw no more fish, despite all 3 juvies waiting hopefully at times throughout the day.
23 August.
Mum and the 3 juvies still here.
10.30 8B3 and 8B4
11.11 8B5
11.35 A jay
12.11 Seren 5F
What an amazing sky today. ©️NRW/Clywedog
Glider said:23 August. Mum and the 3 juvies still here. 10.30 8B3 and 8B4
Apparently, that was the last sighting of 8B3.
The sound was way out of sync and I estimated it was 3 seconds late, so corrected it - but when I played it back there was a long, uninterrupted bout of screeching that I simply couldn't account for - so we'll just have to make allowances
The cam has been conking out at night for a day or two and late starting up in the morning, but this morning it hasn't yet recovered - I checked FB and there's no news.
28 August
A token fish delivery - I think that 8B5 had been waiting on-n-off for hours! But can't swear to it
I think it is clear that all the ospreys from Nest 1 at Clywedog have wisely headed south; it seems the nest 2 gang have also decamped.
I have racked up all the fish deliveries noted on the Clywedog FB page to arrive at the summary charts below. In all 559 fish were seen over the season at Clywedog. 226 Brown Trout and 165 Rainbows make up 60% of the total but remembering the fishery put 40000 trout a year into the reservoir, if all those are from Clywedog, it is less than 1% of the stocked fish.
There have always been a few mullet, but the previous maximum was 10 in a season where we have 25 this year. Brenig has also seen more mullet this season than in previous years - I wonder why? For the first time on the 4 years I have been doing this we saw mackerel among the others. Once again the adults have shown that they are fabulous providers for their young - Dylan has been fishing the Clywedog for 9 years and knows the patch very well; 5F has been there for 5 years, and when she has the opportunity she holds her own.
Thanks to NRW who own the copright to this data, and all those who have recorded observations.
Excellent post, thanks AG.