Wow, if things hadn’t been eventful enough over the last couple of days things really ramped up today when we received some exceptionally exciting news, not from here in the harbour though, but from the western edge of Wales. At around midday a mystery Osprey was spotted on the Dyfi Osprey project webcam, trying to land briefly on the nest with Telyn, their breeding female. Telyn wasn’t really happy about this and the intruder was forced away and eventually settled on one of the perches near by, still in camera view. Thanks to the excellent zoom function on the Dyfi nest cam, the team up there were able to zoom in the newcomer, only to see it was a blue-ringed individual on the right leg…..an British bird! Was it another returning Welsh youngster, or perhaps even a Rutland youngster doing the rounds? Nope. After an agonising wait for the bird to reveal the ring number it eventually did, revealing the code 014!!!! This is a female 2018 Poole Harbour translocated chick. EXCELLENT! As you may remember 2018 was a difficult year for the team and the project with the intense heat wave of that summer sadly impacting on some of the chicks development with several sadly not making it through to migration. However, out of the six that did leave (3 male and 3 female), we knew they were all strong birds and there was a chance we could see one or two back, especially 013 and 014 which were always really big and strong birds from the very start. And now here we are, two years later and 014 is now back in the UK. Her arriving in Wales is pretty typical of a two-year old as youngsters often spend their first summer back in the UK touring the country, interacting with other Ospreys before often then returning to their natal sites later in the summer/early autumn for a short period of time. They’ll then leave south for the winter before hopefully returning back to their natal sites the following spring. The truth is, with 014 being female, she could quite easily be tempted away to breed at another established site, like Wales or Rutland, but we hope we can have enough returning males visiting Poole Harbour each spring over the next 4-5 years that will do their best to make her want to stay here instead! The dyfi team have put this excellent video together documenting 014’s visit to the nest today

Plus, this morning, the Loch of the Lowes youngster from the day before, female Osprey PT0 joined CJ7 on the nest again, with both eye-balling each other from opposite sides of the nest before CJ7 saw off PT0 who wasn’t then seen again for the rest of the day, assumed to have carried on with her migration.

Other bird news today saw the Temminck’s Stint still present at Swineham on the new scrapes along with 1 Little Ringed Plover. At Lytchett Fields 13 Ringed Plover dropped in and a Cuckoo was calling. At Slepe Heath 4 Hobby were active over the area and a migrating Marsh Harrier was seen over central Poole.

What will tomorrow bring??

Female Osprey 014 when she arrived with us in July 2018

Here’s her a couple of days after fledging, settled on a telegraph pole in Poole Harbour (Aug 2018)

And here she was today at the Dyfi nest site, Wales. Photo credit Dyfi Osprey Project.