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Posted: Thursday 7th June 2018 by Emyr MWT
It's been an eventful few days on the Dyfi.
It's hard to believe, but Bobby One will be a week old tomorrow. Thankfully the weather has been kind and promises to be so for another week until they grow out of that dangerous 10-day altricial period.
As each day passes, their ability to see, hear, thermoregulate, learn and understand the world around them increases. Food has been plentiful with Monty catching a spate of bass this week, along with the odd flounder and mullet.
Me, me, me
Bobby One managed to extricate himself away from the safety of the nest-cup a couple of times, but thankfully managed to get back on both occasions. Due to Telyn's Delayed Incubation strategy (see last blog), the chicks are not too easy to tell apart this year, there being only a day and a half between all three hatching. We reckon we can just about tell one Bob from another though, just.
Here's a video with some beautiful cinematography of the ospreys over the last few days, all the way up to this morning:
Blue 24
Great news: Blue 24's eggs have hatched, or at least one of them has.
Our colleagues at Welsh Water - Llyn Brenig rang us on Monday morning to say that they are almost certain they can see movement in the nest, as well as what looks like feeding behaviours. After a run of bad luck and some poor human decisions which didn't help her, Blue 24 is finally a Mum at eight years-of-age.
Blue 24
Her mate is a Scottish male from Lake Menteith, Stirling, Blue HR7. It's quite rare for a Scottish male to breed several hundred miles short of his natal area, in fact, he's the only Scottish male that we know of that has bred this far south in either the Welsh or Rutland colonies.
A very handsome Scottish laddie, HR7 ©BGGW
We have to remember that Llyn Brenig don't have Live Streaming so nobody knows exactly how many eggs/chicks Blue 24 has. Let's hope it's at least two, three would be a bonus.
We're helping the guys at Brenig with the logistics of potentially ringing the chick(s) in four/five weeks time. However, being the first nest platform in Wales actually situated in water, and with a changing reservoir water level, this is not as easy as the terrestrial nests. Brenig will make the final decision whether they ring the chicks, we'll let you know. The Llyn Brening website is here and you can follow them on Facebook here.
Blog Comments
The software that runs the comments section on the website doesn't work any longer, so a few weeks ago we installed a third-party comments module called Discuss. The problem was that the adverts they sometimes show were upsetting people so we've taken it off the site.
We'll be working on a new website over the winter, we'll make sure we get the comments software working again.
Live Streaming
After an awful lot of work, we think we're finally getting somewhere with the recent stability issues of the LS. It hasn't dropped out for a few days now, so last night we put it back on LS page as normal on this website.
The Live Chat seems to be a great success - this is now on our DOP YouTube Channel. Toggle the three dots above the Chat to see various options including whether or not you want to see the current time. You can also disable the Chat by clicking "Hide Chat" underneath the text window.
Finally, if you want to view the LS on this website (i.e. not on YouTube) but still have the Chat facility, you can.
Simply click "pop-out chat" and move it wherever you want.
Very best of luck to Blue 24; if ever an osprey deserves to have her own family, it is surely her :-)
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