THE FULL SET

Blue 500 (Augusta) wasted no time in completing her clutch of eggs when she laid her third, and hopefully final, egg of the season at precisely 1100 this morning. She has spent longer this morning on the nest perch than the last few days, allowing Samson the luxury of incubating, although he did go fishing and provided her with a hearty breakfast just after 0900. She still doesn’t have the confidence or the know-how to push him off the eggs when she wants to take over and she must have been getting a little worried when she could feel herself ready to lay and he would not give up the nest cup to her. He eventually gave way and she settled down and produced for us the wonderful sight of the moment of laying her egg. You can see it drop during this video as she stands up.

We now have the wait of just over 5 weeks from the first egg being laid until it is due to hatch, so around 9/10 June, and this should be something of a hiatus for the parents. He will continue to catch fish for both of them and she should do the majority of the incubating and will also be responsible for guarding the nest and precious eggs from predators of various kinds, and intruding ospreys.

In my last blog, I recounted the first incident that I wanted to bring to your notice and will now tell you of the second. Many of you regular osprey followers might have seen the normal process of the male bringing in a fish, having often eaten the very nutritious head beforehand, and handing it over to the female who usually flies off with it. If she has eaten her fill she often brings back the remainder and gives what’s left back to the male to finish off. Samson has always followed this, as have his previous mates. However, 500 hasn’t yet got to that chapter on her book of how to have a successful and fruitful osprey partnership and, on 1 May, she returned to the nest with the remains of the fish that Samson had previously caught and given to her. He naturally came forward and tried to remove the remains from her talons but she was in no way going to give up the portion she had left. A bit of a scramble then ensued, very like when adolescent osprey chicks try to grab food to feed themselves and end up grabbing their parent’s foot instead. In the end, she decided to fly off with the now rather tatty bit of fish but failed to warn Samson who was still trying to wrestle it from her grasp, with the result that he got dragged across the nest and she got airborne with him still hanging on! In the video, Samson is in the nest and 500 then comes in with the fish.

They did disentangle themselves and she made off with the prize. One of the things that struck me was the sheer power of 500 to drag Samson across the nest and then get airborne with him, initially at least, as a dead weight. The second thing I thought about was thank goodness there were no eggs in the nest at that stage!

I think they must have worked things out after that because, since then, she has given up remains if she’s come into the nest but has been left alone by Samson if she’s brought back fish onto the nest perch. it was an interesting part of them learning about each other and developing a bond.

I’m hoping that the birds have an uneventful incubation period; however, there is usually some drama or otherwise to disturb what should be a peaceful time before the mayhem of the chicks arriving and I will let you know if there anything to report.