As our ospreys are enjoying 30°C temperatures in Africa, we have been rather less warm here on the Dyfi - subzero temperatures actually. Nevertheless, the biting cold has not distracted us from carrying on with improving the visitor facilities for the upcoming season.

This year we will have a second portacabin that will double up as a volunteer room and storage facility, meaning the original visitor centre can now be opened up to be one large room just for visitors. Almost 50,000 people visited in 2011 and we got a tiny bit cramped at times!

Locally-sourced timber cladding going up..

By mid-week we had the lino down on the floor and had everything cleaned and polished. The old partition was removed from the visitor centre and put up in the volunteer cabin. The whole operation went smoothly, overseen by our new volunteer Project Manager for the week..

Milly - inspecting the new lino as volunteers John Parry and Alan Hughes take a break. Again!

Despite the cold temperatures, we had a Glossy Ibis visit the Dyfi this week. This bird spent the week in Borth, just on the mouth of the Dyfi estuary - maybe it wanted a closer look to see what we were doing for the new osprey season! Incredibly, it's another bird with a Darvic leg ring.

*** UPDATE: Our friend Tony Cross from the Welsh Kite Trust has just informed us of the origin of this Glossy Ibis. "I received an email yesterday from the Estacion Biologica de Donana with the ringing details of the colour-ringed Glossy Ibis seen on Sunday.  It was ringed as a chick on 7th May 2007 in the Cota Donana, Andalusia, Southern Spain, 1,720 kms south of Borth. It was also seen there on 2nd April 2010. Why on earth has it suddenly decided to pay us a visit in the depths of winter?" ***

Glossy Ibis with a leg ring White 8J9 on the Dyfi this week

By Friday and Saturday, most of the electrics had been installed, including new connections to the visitor centre where we hope to have High Definition cameras this year, more on this in a future blog.

During the next two weeks we are planning a Herculean volunteer event. We need at least 60 people to help with connecting new, state-of-the-art cameras on the osprey nest to the visitor centre; a distance, including bends and corners, of around 800 metres. This is a logistical nightmare but with enough people and good teamwork we can do it. Look out for more details in the next few days, we should have all the information and a definitive date by the end of this week.

This has been an exciting week for Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust as we also have a new Chief Executive on board - welcome to Estelle Bailey for her second stint at the helm. We are continually trying to improve facilities for visitors to the Dyfi Osprey Project and we think this will be the best yet.

Finally, our thoughts this week also turn to a young local girl from Machynlleth who was involved in a car accident just to the south of the Dyfi Osprey Project last Wednesday as we worked on the new facilities. Lucy Drought was air-lifted to Shrewsbury hospital with broken arms and pelvis. The Emergency Service guys were incredible - great job. We wish Lucy a very speedy recovery back to full health.