(All photos courtesy of P Sumerling)
I think the Border Ospreys musical chairs game is over for 2026. KX7 lost interest in us when her regular partner arrived back at Kielder yesterday, although she was casting covetous eyes at another, at present, unattached male at Kielder but I’m sure she’ll now settle down.
I had a report of 3 ospreys flying in the area of the nest on Saturday evening but when I went down there on the Sunday there was only one bird, hunkered well down in the nest, and the conditions were so bad that I never could see any identifying features. The head feathers looked a bit like Augusta’s but the poor bird was soaking wet and she was not happy when Samson brought in a fish and then proceeded to eat most of it in front of her. I couldn’t keep the scope still in the blustery conditions to get any idea of even whether she was ringed or not and we had a typical Scottish Spring day with sun, rain, hail and snow all accompanied by a penetrating icy wind. Before you get too impressed by your heroic reporter, battling the conditions to bring you the latest news, I have to admit that I stood right by my car with the scope and took shelter whenever I needed to do so!
Monday couldn’t have been much more different with the wind having dropped away to nothing and mostly dry. I don’t think it was the same bird as I’d seen the previous day but the morning found a striking looking female accompanying Samson in the nest. When she got onto the perch I could see that she was unringed. She did some stick moving in the nest but little else because she spent a lot of the day defending herself from a persistent female intruder. We had some visitors yesterday and I have to thank Paul for the photos in this blog. They got a great view of the two females battling on the nest and also flying around in the area, trying to manoeuvre into the best positions. It was quite a dramatic afternoon and it ended with the unringed female still in possession of the nest. The intruder never came close enough for me to have a good look at her.
This morning saw yet another occupier of the nest. There was no sign of the unringed female but a very familiar figure was sitting on the nest perch and was identifiable even without the scope as Augusta, ring number 500, our resident female. My best guess would be that she was the “intruder” yesterday but needed to recover from her journey and give herself a good feed before really taking on the unringed bird. I think it’s certain that there had been more battles because, although I didn’t see any other intruders today, Augusta looked like she was super glued to the nest and only left it to feed when Samson brought her a very welcome fish. Even then, she stayed very close to the nest rather than moving further away as she normally does.
Samson has wasted no time and has already mated with her on several occasions today, even once when she had hardly got her talons on the nest after eating. His manners do leave a little to be desired at times! There have been some half hearted attempts at collecting sticks but I think tomorrow will see the couple re-energised and doing some serious nest building and restoring.
It’s a great relief to have them both back and both earlier than last year. Hopefully, it will be a sign of things to come but we’ll have to wait and see. I continue to threaten, cajole and plead with the camera set up…and throw more money at it… in the hope that I can get some semblance of a working system. I’ll keep you posted on all that’s going on to the best of my ability.
Border Ospreys 