They are back

Looks like bad news for the Loch Arkaig ospreys.

Three eggs were laid and the youngest one was attacked mainly be one of the others and died. That isn't so unusual but the male hasn't been seen since last Wednesday so it will be difficult for the female to raise the young on her own(though they are fairly large), and the recent weather has been pretty bad.

Unfortunately these things happen.

Dave

www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

Loch Arkaig Osprey Cam: Live Webcam - Woodland Trust

Watch the action from our osprey nest in the heart of an ancient Caledonian pine forest. Our remote camera brings you footage live from the Scottish Highlands.
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk www.woodlandtrust.org.uk
 
What a shame, it looks bleak but it could resolve itself at any point. The female is off the nest now, hopefully she can sustain both offspring, fingers crossed.

I'm not sure I can look again, please keep us posted.
 
The Woodland Trust have made moves to be in a position to remove the chicks if necessary. This is from the website above -

After taking advice we have decided to place some fish on the nest today if Louis or Dorcha do not bring anything in meantime. This could be within the next hour or two subject to legal clearance. The camera may be switched off for this to happen.

Given the weekend is approaching, a licence is also being sought to remove the chicks from the nest so we have that option over the weekend if we need it.
The advice we have received is that if Louis has not returned by the end of the weekend, then he likely will not be returning. That being the case it is unlikely Dorcha would be able to successfully raise the two chicks to the end of the season and migration. Even given her best efforts to protect them and fish, they would likely not make it.

Enquiries have revealed that among the options there is potential for the chicks to go into an existing translocation programme for the benefit of the species. We won’t commit to that until we are sure Louis and Dorcha don’t have a good chance of continuing undisturbed to raise their family.

The tricky thing is not intervening too soon when Louis might turn up at any moment, and not leaving it too late until the chicks won’t be in good enough condition to survive translocation.

The advice we have is that it is too soon to write Louis off yet, but if he continues to be absent until late into the weekend then we should look at removing the chicks then.
The licence to do that is being sought today, even if it is not needed in the end.

In order to increase the chance of a successful outcome for the chicks should they be removed in a few days time, they are going to be fed today to tide them over for now. They may also be fed tomorrow.
To provision the nest Lewis will climb the tree and leave fish.

You will appreciate we have a lot to sort out and I may not be able to answer the many questions I am sure you will have. So please bear with us.


Dave
 
Some good news. The Woodland Trust put some fish on the nest yesterday with a view, as in the piece above, to giving the chicks food before removing them, it that became necessary. However, at 8:25 this morning Louis(the male) returned looking well fed and with part of a fish.

Fingers crossed things return to normal.

Dave
 
Fingers crossed.

I was suprised there was no mention (until now) of removing the chicks. I understand it's not that simple, with licences, timing, legality etc but I really doubted they would be left to perish.

Hopefully, now Louis is back, things will become more normal for this nest. (y)
 
Unfortunately things have not gone well at nest two on Loch Arkaig.

Although Louis(the male) returned on Saturday with part of a fish he has only delivered one fish yesterday and spent hours perched in a tree. The experts believe this is not sufficient for the chicks to survive and also with the poor weather the decision was made to remove the chicks this morning. This is an update from last night -

Having kept the situation under review again today it has been decided that the chicks will be removed from the nest tomorrow morning and handed on to the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation to be translocated to Spain.

The nest will likely be visited around 10am depending on how the weather turns out. The chicks will be given another good feed on the nest before being taken out of the tree.

I know you will have lots of questions about every last detail of this procedure but I don’t have much of that at the moment.

They will go to a specialised aviary in Inverness where they will be hand fed and looked after over the following days. Beak swabs will be taken to test them for avian flu and some other infections required before they embark overseas. Assuming all is well with that, they will be flown out to Spain on July 10th likely with ten other Scottish chicks.

This programme was already planned and in motion and it has been incredibly fortuitous that the timing fits with the emergence of our crisis on the nest at Arkaig.

We have had a number of tough decisions to take in the last week but actually this last one has been quite easy. There seems to be something wrong with Louis, possibly compounded by poor fishing conditions. The rate at which he has been fishing is just not enough to give the chicks a reasonable chance of survival. Even if they struggled through to the end of the summer it is felt very unlikely they would survive migration, which calls for considerable reserves of energy.

We are fairly certain at least one of the chicks would have died by now had there not been supplementary feeding on Friday and this morning.

When Louis was absent after Wednesday we wanted to at least wait to see if he would return before stepping in. Even though he returned on Saturday, there is something not right with him and we cannot have confidence he will return to form in time to stop the chicks from perishing. Before his disappearance he perched for most of Wednesday after bringing in one fish. Today he perched up for eight hours again after bringing one fish. The family needs more than that if it is to build up enough strength to survive migration.

The window of opportunity to enter the chicks in this translocation is brief and we did not want to be in the position of hanging on longer to see if the situation improved for our family. By removing them we hopefully take the pressure off the adults and allow them to replenish themselves in the coming weeks.

Continuing to feed them ourselves at Loch Arkaig is just not a feasible option. There are risks every time we go in. If the family is not viable on its own efforts its best the chicks get a chance in Spain.

Louis and Dorcha will almost certainly stick around with the nest as the centre of their partnership before migrating a bit earlier than usual so we will hopefully see them for a good while yet.

As I said previously - Scotland currently enjoys a population of beavers, red kites and sea eagles because other countries gifted us some of theirs. It is marvellous that Scotland is giving this gift to Spain and I think we should be proud that the Arkaig pair are going to be part of it. They will be ringed as having fledged in Spain but their highland heritage will be on record. My understanding is they are going to be GPS tagged so we should be able to receive updates about them.

I am sure some people will post for or against what is happening, which is fine, but please don’t get into rows about it. There is absolutely no point. The decision has been made. It was our decision to make and we did so in consultation with osprey experts. I hope that even those who don’t like what is happening will acknowledge that we have given thorough and honest consideration of all the options before coming to this conclusion.

We were driven at all times to do what is best for the ospreys - both our family and the species as a whole. Our two chicks will get a better chance to survive. The species’ range will be increased making it more resilient in the years ahead.

We’ll miss them of course. But then we would have been parting with them in a few weeks time anyway.

And as some of you say at the end of every season - “Don’t be sad to see them go. The journey is their purpose.”

Please enjoy the last few hours of them on the livestream.

We will keep you updated on how things go tomorrow.

Dave
 
I'm not really one for interfering too much with wildlife but I think in this case, it is the right decision.
 
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