On Saturday morning we started Part I of our 2017 nest camera installation.

Some bits were good, others not so good. Here is a brief rundown of the day:

09:00

Arrived at nest and tested Cam 3 which stopped working last Tuesday in the 80mph winds. It retained lens control and movement but was not sending any images so we took it down for further testing next week.

Cam 4 (same model as 3) was re-installed after we took it down last autumn for servicing and repair. It was transmitting upside-down images! This was the Live Streaming camera during the latter stages of 2016 - some of you may remember seeing Monty et al upside-down for a few hours!

Cameras 3 and 4

10:30

While our camera techs Andy and Aled ponder what to do with the broken camera, Kim undertakes some final nest maintenance and nestorations before our feathered friends return.

11:30

You may remember that we lost Cam 1, the dome camera on the larch perch, around June time last year. With the aid of scaffolding, we now understand why the camera failed.

The CAT 5 cable had been pulled completely out of the camera, explaining why the system could not even recognise CAM 1 anymore. Maybe the cows that graze this part of the reserve had snagged on some of the cables - we'll make sure that the new cables are positioned in even more hard-to-get-to areas this year when we replace the cables next week.

Holy Cow - what's happened here?

13:00

Lunch - Kim and I went looking for a potential and suitable replacement for the nest perch. We'd found a good looking bit of driftwood a couple of weeks prior when we did the volunteer reserve litter pick-up. Thankfully, it was in the exact same spot as we had left it around 300m away from the nest.

It's alright Kim, you carry the iPhone

She did help to be fair - with 20m left to go.

Here's some of the stuff we picked up off the reserve on 1st March. We managed to recycle most of it.

14:40

The brand new wonder-camera is installed. This is the new 4K camera (AXIS 6128-E).

It can shake off raindrops itself and spin almost two full circles (700°) in one second!

15:00

Best bit of the day - testing the new camera..

Andy & Aled network the new camera to the system and we're ready for our first live pictures on a laptop

It works!!

I panned the new camera around the reserve and zoomed in on a few favourite perches. The picture quality was utterly astounding.

16:00

Our minds were pretty much made up anyway, but we took a very good look at the boing perch. It needed to go. Our replacement perch was much more robust, and safer for the birds. After all, it was called the boing perch for a reason.

Kim and Aled unscrew the old boing perch off its mounting plate

It was rotten throughout and probably would not have withstood a 2Kg osprey landing on it with force. As soon as it hit the ground it broke in two.

Time to say goodbye to the boing perch

16:30

Aled and Kim raise the new perch to its new location before bolting it on securely.

Some famous and very special ospreys have used the boing perch over the years - look out for a cameo of Boing Perch Specials next week on Facebook.

17:00

Our work was done for the day. Next week we'll install a new camera on the larch perch with its own IR lamps so we can see the birds perching on it at night time. We'll also re-cable CAM 1 - hopefully it still works.

Lastly, a couple of non-osprey related images from the weekend:

False Puffball (Enteridium lycoperdon)

This slime mould (Myxomycetes) was about 5cm in diameter and is seen in its reproductive phase here as a white 'swelling' on standing dead trees in the spring, or on large pieces of fallen wood like this large log on Cors Dyfi, around 400m from the osprey nest.

This is an early stage of the fruiting body, it later develops a smooth silvery surface, which then splits to expose a brown spore mass beneath.

When the spores have been dispersed by wind and rain (around two weeks after the stage shown here), there is little left to see but inconspicuous delicate wisps, resembling soft foam padding.

Toads at Cors Dyfi

Toads and frogs are easily distinguished by the fact that frogs have smooth, moist skin, while toads, like these two photographed by the first pool on Friday, have drier, ‘warty’ skin. Frogs have longer legs so that they can jump, whereas toads have shorter legs and tend to crawl.

Common toads have a variety of colours. They have a round, blunt snout, distinct bulges on back of head known as the parotoid glands and a horizontal slit pupil with a yellow/golden brown iris. The parotoid glands secrete a milky alkaloid substance (bufotoxin) which acts as a neurotoxin to deter predators.

Female toads are much larger than the males - around 13cm (5 inch) versus 8cm (3 inch). Males clasp the females in a special hold known as 'amplexus' during mating in February and March, often on the way to the breeding ponds where they hitch a ride! They remain like this for a few days as the female lays her spawn.

Unlike a lot of amphibian species, common toads prefer ponds with fish - which the first pond (nearest the visitor centre) has, as their tadpoles are poisonous to fish giving them a greater chance of outcompeting frog tadpoles. They continue to be able to secrete toxins as adults and therefore have fewer predators. However, they are taken by herons, some crows and grass snakes.

Although the common toad is a widespread species in Britain, its population is in sharp decline. This has led to it being listed as a Priority Species in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.

Thank you so much to everyone that has donated to the 2017 camera appeal, we're over one-third of the way there already after just one week!

The total now is around £7,500. Look out for Part II next week.