Empty nest

This is the image from the Aberfoyle Osprey nest. There's something badly wrong with this picture, and it's the fact that there is no bird sitting there. The first chick was due to hatch by now, and we should be seeing an attentive mother bird protecting a tiny chick from the elements and a proud dad coming in with fish.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the female seems to have abandoned the nest, and there is no clue as to why. There have been intruders, but not to the extent that it would cause her to leave the nest. She'd been taking leaves of absence which had made everyone watching nervous, but now seems to have left it completely. Due to the chilly weather and wind, it's almost certain that the un-hatched chicks will have died.

It's very, very sad. This is the third year running that this nest has failed, with different birds.

From a visual point of view, the staff at Aberfoyle will set up a camera at a back-up nest which will hopefully have chicks hatching out for people to see, but it is a mystery as to why this particular nest has suffered three consecutive years of failure. It's also perhaps a reminder that nature is pretty damned cruel, and how precarious the lives and success of the osprey in Scotland is.

Spring is busting out all over...

(Me with a 5 week old osprey chick)


Very exciting news this morning with the news that the first chick had hatched on EJ and Odin's nest at Loch Garten. This morning I had a look at the webcam and EJ stood up very gingerly to reveal the teeniest, wobbliest wee chick which waggled its head and then collapsed again before EJ manoevred herself with great delicacy back over it to provide it and the other two eggs shelter. It always amazes me, having seen and held ospreys, the size of those talons, how they manage to manoevre their way over these tiny little chicks without stabbing them. It does happen, but it's very rare.

The oldest breeding female osprey, Lady, at Loch of the Lowes, is due to hatch out her 49th, 50th, and 51st chicks over the course of the next few days, and the birds at Aberfoyle aren't that far behind.

So it's all go, and, as as one Loch Garten blogger put it: the rollercoaster ride begins. It's a long 7 weeks until the chicks fledge and in that time, with the Scottish weather, anything can happen. Keep your fingers, toes, legs, eyes, and anything else you can, crossed for a half-decent summer and good fishing!
On Sunday I'm heading to Aberfoyle to do a stint. I'm looking forward to it, though I've found it really hard going this week with work, and am at work again on Monday, so I'm planning a few very, very, early nights next week to help me manage. I'm quite taken aback at how exhausted I'm finding being at work, but then, as well as being at work, I'm doing all the house-work too, so it shouldn't be that surprising. Just need to take it one week at a time I think...

From eyries to earth now - I visited the Allotment yesterday for the first time since the weekend, expecting to see a burst of weeds, but also a burst of growth after the heavy rain of the last few days. I wasn't disappointed on the weed front, the grass has been putting out runners and forming clumps and mats around established veg, and there are rogue potato plants popping up beside new seedlings. Wonderfully though, there are now pea and beetroot seedlings. I had bought some young beetroot plants at the weekend, but a glut of beetroot is never a bad thing in this house as D pickles them, so they have gone in beside the new seedlings.

What amazed me though was the state of the soil: I had expected the rain to have transformed the dry cracked earth into crumbly, workable loveliness, but it seems instead to have activated the clay in the soil which has now hardened. The top layer of the soil is just dust which swirled around in the wind. So trying to yank out weeds meant that the top of it snapped off but the root remained in situ. Maybe it's not rained enough - what a dreadful thought!!
My poor kale seedlings are under attack though, from *something*. Most likely caterpillars as the cabbage white butterflies have been rampant. So I've salvaged D's empty 2L fizzy drink bottles and cut the bottoms off, and have plonked these over the remaining kale seedlings to hopefully prevent further attack. And I gave the last rites to the courgette plants which didn't, after all, survive the frost, so have more seedlings on the go in the house. One of which has an Elastoplast on it after I cleverly managed to snap one of the stems, and I'm living in hope that it wasn't snapped right off and can mend itself!

The weather here has been awful though - we've had gales all week and temperatures barely into double figures, but in reality pegged back by the wind to much colder than that. I'm worried that my greenhouse isn't generating enough heat to keep the tomatoes going, and I resorted to putting a clear polythene bag over the butternut squash plant in the garden. Though I'm thinking that what would be really useful, is a huge clear plastic bottle I can butcher and turn into a cloche/greenhouse thing. Something like offices use on their water-coolers. If you know of anywhere I can get my hands on one, do let me know!
 

Busy busy

Wow, can't believe it's been a week since I updated!

I've had a busy week. On Saturday I was at the Pagan Federation Conference in Edinburgh, where I met up with people I haven't seen in far too long, heard some brilliant and interesting speakers, and managed to avoid the ones who I would have found less than inspiring. Vivienne Crowley's Grail talk was really interesting, and the lady herself funny and managing to combine healthy scepticism with belief. The other workshops of note were two run by Christer Ellingsen talking about Shamanic Trancework. His first session was talking about the trance work and the term "Shaman". It was interesting (and reassuring) to hear that he considers Shamanism to be a craft, a method, rather than a religious path. He was quite adamant that it is not religous at all, and that he does not consider himself a Shaman as that is a specific role which doesn't really have a place in today's society. The second workshop was a practical trance workshop which was incredible, with him drumming and which left everyone I spoke to afterwards feeling drained as though they'd been running.

As usual at these things, there's a real mix of the earthy and ethereal. Workshops about unicorns and chakras might suit some but I steered clear! The shopping stalls were as usual, too enticing for my bank balance so I bought a couple of things, including a pair of earrings from a very talented lady who I know, Peggy at MoonlightForest.com.

The evening entertainment involved my having to act as magician's assistant - a task which was suitably embarrassing! It was followed by the amazing Damh the Bard, who I have never seen live. He was fantastic. Great music which everyone sang along with, and the man himself self-deprecating and plain funny.

Despite having had next to no sleep the night before, I managed to last the whole evening and am so very grateful to my friend Andrew for being taxi driver :-)

A couple of days later I was up at Aberfoyle, resuming duties as Osprey information officer. The new chap in charge was keen to reassure me again about the lack of pressure to sell memberships. I have to say I was kind of shocked at how young he looked - am I getting old?! The room is completely re-done, with windows (hurray!!), more touchy-feely exhibits, more screens, more animals to talk about. It was great to get back into the swing of things again. There are birds on the nest - though not the usual pair who haven't returned :-( This pair are the third on the nest in the last couple of weeks, but look as though they're the ones who will hold it. Neither of them are ringed which means we have no idea about their history. But they're mating and nest building so we expect an egg imminently! Usual left-field questions - the best were "Which route does the West Highland Way go at Inversnaid?" and "Is the road through Thornhill still closed?"...

After a full-on couple of days I was totally exhausted. As I suspected, speaking to people is what really tires me out and drains me, so it's been nice having a very quiet couple of days since.

At the Allotment, all is going well, particularly the weeds... We've had such good weather I've had to water the veg beds, not that I'm complaining! The raspberry bush is spreading like wildfire - makes you realise how much of a rip-off raspberry plants are at garden centres! It's lovely to see everything springing up.

And the swallows have returned!

Summer is definitely a cumin' in :-)

Progress

There could be huge changes in Lewis with the enforcement of an element of the Human Rights Act. It could mean the end of swings tied up on Saturday nights so kids can't play on them on Sundays, the closed swimming pool, and the closed golf club. If enforced, and there's every chance it will be, it is nothing short of revolutionary. As an outsider I think the changes are necessary but don't (at the moment) go far enough: supermarkets won't open, petrol stations will remain closed etc, but I concede that it brings to an end something quite special and unique. Lewis is a place apart, its remoteness emphasised by both distance and the customs of people who live there. It's a shame in a way, and I hope, futilely, that the Lewis-ness is preserved.

In other news, osprey season has well and truly begun with the shock arrival of Scotland's oldest breeding osprey, Lady, at Loch Of The Lowes at Dunkeld.

Last year she nearly died due to a mystery illness, and her death throes were watched live on webcam. As thousands of viewers of the webcam watched horrified she fell off the nest, apparently dead, only to haul herself to the loch side and drink (ospreys get all their liquid intake from fish and never drink), and then, a couple of hours later, regain enough energy to fly back to the nest and eventually feed herself and get her strength back. She raised two chicks, her 47th and 48th. When she left for her emigration at the end of the season, everyone bid her a tearful and final farewell, certain that the rigours of the 3000 mile journey south would be too much for the weakened bird.

We certainly didn't expect her to survive the winter or to make the trip back, and yet, incredibly, she has. Such has the reaction been from the public, the Scottish Wildlife Trust has crashed, and has had to disable posting comments facility, to allow their staff to focus their efforts on the osprey.

This osprey is just astonishing. She has returned to breed in the same nest now for 21 years. Twenty One years. The contribution she has made to the osprey population, not to mention our knowledge of ospreys, is inculable. It made me very emotional to see her again after such trials. And she seems in very fine fettle, raring to go. So fingers crossed for a healthy season :-)

All about the birds

To start with I've sorted out the mad time issue I know at least one reader has spotted, the miracle of how I can enjoy a few hours at the allotment, sit in the warm sun and it still be only 8am - in Scotland. I had my time zone set for some exotic location in the Pacific, but it's set back to Blighty Time now.

After yesterday's exertions at the allotment and then spending hours on the phone chatting to friends, today is a wash-out. The sun is shining (though it's a lot colder), but I have absolutely no energy today at all. That there will be napping this afternoon is a given, which is a real pity because I was hoping to get out and about. No chance. In fact D is going to have to do the shopping and housework on his own while I lie on the sofa. What a nuisance.

So today's blogs is about birds.

My minuscule back garden, as well as being home to hens, also has a fair few wild bird visitors to the various bird feeders hanging from the apple trees. I have regular visits from a pair of blue-tits; a pair of coal-tits; a charm of chaffinches (isn't that a great collective noun?); a pair of sparrows (who also happen to be resident in the clematis hedge that I should really have cropped back, but didn't have the heart to so they could have winter shelter), and a pair of blackbirds.

Today the blue-tits have been hard at work nest building, they've been stopping on the apple tree with beaks full of moss, before heading onto wherever their nest is. The blackbird - the female one in particular - has been amusing me by her "lawks-a-mercy" antics. She'll quite happily land on the bird-seed tray while you're in the garden, and ignore you while she feeds, them as soon as she's done, she pretends to be outraged and terrified that you're there, and flaps off screaming indignantly. She'll repeat this process endlessly, which always makes me wonder why she is astonished at finding me in the garden with her...

So yes, it's very nice seeing these signs of spring and sap rising and all that.

However, the big neon "IT'S SPRING" indicator arrived back in Scotland yesterday: EJ the ospey returned to Loch Garten.

I've been hooked on the story of EJ and ospreys for years. These raptors who eat only fish, who come to Scotland every Spring to breed (the long Scottish Summer days means they can fish almost 24 hours a day, ideal when you've hungry mouths to feed), and whose life stories have thousands as glued to their daily antics as any soap opera. Who were extinct in the UK only 50-odd years ago due to hunting but who now number 250 breeding pairs. I am so enraptured by these birds that I decided to volunteer at the David Marshall Lodge in Abeerfoyle, in the Trossachs, where there is a healthy osprey population, to share my enthusiasm with others.

Flying back from Senegal and the Gambia in March, these birds travel hundreds of miles in 3 weeks, returning to the same nest they left back in August. When they arrive, their stories are ones of adultery, violence, infanticide, heroism, desperation, sacrifice, heartbreak and miracles.

So now the games begin again and the questions which are posed at the start of every season will be eventually answered.

Will Odin, EJ's regular mate return in time to stop her mating with Red8A, a male who has at least one other mate and nest on the go?

Will the "camera'd" nest at Aberfoyle be successful this year? The last two have seen empty nests when fighting males kicked out the eggs.

Will a miracle occur and allow Lady, Scotland's oldest osprey, to return, or will she have died on her migration south last year after some of the most incredible events last year which had people all over the country weeping, and then cheering as events unfolded on webcam?

Stay tuned :-)