With the Sandwich Terns now beginning to fledge on Brownsea and the Common Terns to follow shortly, its safe to say it’s been a bumper year for both species. Rough counts of chicks for Sandwich Tern is said to be around c60 and Common Tern came in at around 101! This is great news seeing they’ve struggled in recent years. The Avocet is still sitting tight at her nest site, although things are getting a little late. Will the pair pull it out of the bag and hatch the first Avocet young in Dorset for many years or will this story have a sadder ending? There’s still time for a happy ending so we’re all still keeping fingers well and truly crossed. A Roseate Tern was on the lagoon again as were the 6 Spoonbill. At Arne there were 2 Osprey again around the Middlebere area and the Hobby camera was getting a lot of attention in the visitors centre. There was also a Turtle Dove reported from a private garden near Studland. 

Osprey Translocation Update

It’s been a couple of weeks now since we announced the exciting news we’re helping facilitate an Osprey translocation project here in Poole Harbour. Our partners in the project include Jason Fathers from Wildlife Technology Company Wildlife Windows, and Jason has been slogging away over the last month getting everything in place ready for the chick’s arrival. Our other partners are the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and this week they’ve been busy assessing nest sites up in Scotland and even began collecting chicks today ready to bring down to Poole. Depending on how the next couple of days go we are hoping to see ‘the class of 17′ arrive early next week, which is beyond exciting. As we hope you’ll understand, the location of the holding pens has to remain confidential but we’ll be blogging and providing updates on the chicks progress, and as they’re only in the holding pens for a couple of weeks, it won’t hopefully be long until they’ll be flying free around the harbour. Today we received some photos from Tim Makrill and Roy Dennis, which provide the first images of the two of our eight Poole bound Osprey chicks. More to follow over the coming days and next week will certainly be worth waiting for.

Roy Dennis with two Poole bound Osprey chicks for the Poole Harbour translocation project