Scotland’s best-known osprey site, Loch Garten in Speyside, has eggs for the first time in 4 years, this can be revealed.
A new pair of ospreys has settled in the nest of the RSPB’s Abernethy National Nature Reserve, where iconic raptors returned to Scotland in the 1950s after becoming extinct here in the early twentieth century.
Staff at the RSPB’s Loch Garten Osprey Center showed that the pair had now produced two eggs, raising hopes of a successful first breeding since 2018.
The last resident female, known as JE, gave birth to at least 23 chicks between 2013 and 2018, but did not return from migration the following spring, leaving the iconic unoccupied for the first time in 60 years.
Fergus Cumberland, Director of Visitor Operations at the Osprey Centre, said: “It’s fantastic. This is the first time in 4 years that we have an active osprey nest with eggs, so it is very exciting.
We have an egg!. . . We have an egg. For the first time in four years, we see Loch Garten being used as an active nesting site and it really is exciting!The male osprey (Axel) also brought fish this morning, so we will see their luck continue for the next two weeks and maybe more eggs will follow!
Published via RSPB Loch Garten, Abernethy on Wednesday May 2022
“The first egg was laid on the night of May 3. Our female seemed to be having contractions, then stood up and looked surprised, and there was a spotted egg under her. An egg moment was visual in the nest on Saturday morning.
The male, known as Blue AX6, scored at a nesting site at Glen Affric when it was a chick in 2016 and was first seen at Loch Garten a year ago. It is believed that the female may be the same unroaded bird that was first seen at the site last year. It is believed that the couple is reproducing for the first time.
Mr Cumberland said: “Last year we saw our male Blue AX6 looking to mate with an unroadvanted female. Based on its behavior, we suspect that it is the same bird. This year, they seem to be making this nest their home. “
Ospreys disappeared in Scotland in the early twentieth century. In 1954, two Scandinavian breeding birds arrived in Loch Garten and established a nest in the forest near the freshwater lake.
In 1959, Loch Garten’s ospreys were the only ones to breed in the UK and, after hatching 3 chicks, the RSPB opened the nest to a controlled public, in order to help the piscivorous birds of prey.
Later, Loch Garten was noted for its breeding population of ospreys, which earned Boat of Garten its nickname “The Osprey Village”.
Bird lovers from all over the country a “fascinating” live broadcast of the nest around the palombes