It’s clear that Samson is passing on his sneaky genes. Having spent the morning watching the nest for but not seeing any signs of activity, I noticed that the farm vehicles were coming in to set up the watering system for the potatoes in the field below the nest. So, since then, Augusta has been sitting tight on the nest and not letting me have a look underneath her.

So it was very exciting when, at 1730, Samson arrived with a nice headless fish and she stood up to reveal…their first chick of 2026! Just like his sneaky dad, he (it has to be a “he” with the same mentality) had hidden away until he could make an entrance when his first meal arrived. Unlike last year, when Augusta was very tentative about feeding her very first youngster, she was straight in and successfully fed the chick with her first couple of attempts. As normal, Samson is fussing around, showing a great interest in his offspring.

Please take the time to check out this family on my YouTube channel (link below). Every year, it comes as a surprise to me how tiny the chicks are and how quickly they grow. Blink and they’re strutting around the nest as if they’re ready to take over the world, so enjoy them at the cuddly stage and I’ll let you know how the rest of the hatching window goes.

https://www.youtube.com/live/tku99L-hsm8?si=LoL333VE_WCELdZ_

Hi everyone. I hope you’ve all been enjoying the live views of the nest that are now available on YouTube (link at the bottom of this blog). The pair have been extremely lucky with the weather and you haven’t yet seen Augusta’s best “drowned rat” impersonation that we often get during incubation.

We have had one or two intrusions since the last blog. 724 was persistent for a couple of days but hasn’t been seen recently. It’s always nice to see other birds but they do endanger eggs and chicks with the agitated incubator trying to see it off without leaving the nest, potentially damaging both. 731 was seen earlier in the season and we await details of both intruders from the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, although we do know that 731 is from the Tweed area.

At long last, we are approaching the opening of the possible hatching period and, after taking my shoes and socks off so that I can use my toes as well as my fingers to count, I reckon we’re looking at about 28th for the first egg to be due to hatch. As those of you who have followed me for a while know, things are often not as straight forward as we would wish, and last year no 2 egg did not hatch and we were unable to work out why. So your fingers need to be tightly crossed that everything works out in the birds’ favour this year.

I’m going to be playing around with the camera a bit, seeing how far I can zoom it without losing too much clarity so please bear with me if you tune in and it looks a little wild on the screen. If we can get a decent picture where you can see what’s going on with the eggs, it might be that I leave it on zoomed during the hatching time but we’ll see how it goes. The other thing to work out is to see if I can use the zoom facility from home, or whether I have to be on site. If I can’t, much though I appreciate your support, I won’t be taking a sleeping bag down there and you may have to be a little patient before you get your first close-up look at eggs/chicks in the morning. I will also be expanding the coverage to start at 0500 local time, as long as the battery and solar panel can cope.

So, exciting times are close at hand. If you see a hatching, please make a note of the time (chick fully out of shell) and then post it as a comment at the end of this blog which I will then pick up; that will be a great help. A time for a first feed would be useful too.

YouTube feed:

https://www.youtube.com/live/qMthaNwbUd4?si=0ZbfeqMilhlWpsj2

We are now up and running live on YouTube, so please head on over there where you can see, at the moment, beautiful Augusta sitting patiently on the nest in the sunshine (so saying, Samson has just taken over and Augusta is going “sticking”). Thank you for your patience as I jumped the gun a little last week for which I received a deserved smack on the head from Jain, my techie lady.

For identification purposes, as well as Augusta being ringed 500, she also has the darker head feathers with almost a complete line from the top down the back of her head, with a small dot on either side at the top. From the front, she has far heavier forehead markings with distinct “frown” lines. Samson has an altogether whiter head, with a distinct break in the line at the back and far lighter forehead markings. He loves to incubate and is always more than ready when he can persuade Augusta to get up from the nest!

I hope you enjoy watching. I have disabled the chat for the present.

As broadband has finally reached the particular depths of this part of the Scottish Borders, I am excited to be able to tell you that we have set up a live feed so you can watch the day to day “goings-on” at Samson and Augusta’s nest. It’s very much at the experimental phase and you know how much fun and games we’ve already had this year with the non-osprey side of operations. However, if you will bear with us when the feed doesn’t work or the sun refuses to shine and the battery goes on strike, plus all the other glitches that might happen, you can enjoy as much as I do the truly awesome sight of our osprey family raising their 2026 family.

If there is sufficient interest, I can hopefully refine the system over the winter, although I’ll not be able to match some of the other wonderful live cams that are available. In the meantime, YouTube will not let us livestream unless we have at least 50 subscribers, so if you would be kind enough to subscribe (it’s free) on the link below, we will be able to go “live“ very soon.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCIk8ptg7n-jTMhi36pkTmrA

I was actually watching the live feed this morning when, at 1012, Augusta laid her third egg to complete her 2026 clutch (a fourth egg is technically possible but most unlikely). I haven’t got a clear picture to show you yet but, on handover of incubating duties, it was noticeable that Samson had his normal difficulty in manoeuvring the eggs for the first time to get all 3 underneath him!

So now we settle down for the incubation period and we will be looking for, fingers crossed, hatching at the end of May. Let’s hope we have a peaceful, drama-free month of May.

Augusta laid her second egg yesterday, so I think it’s probable that the first egg was laid on Wednesday, for those of you keeping count on such things. Things have been going quite smoothly for our pair so far with decent fish availability and nice weather. There have been a couple of ringed intruders but both have been seen off before landing on the nest. One cheekily followed Samson in when he arrived with a fish and the other took advantage of Samson’s absence to hover over the nest before being sent on his way by an irate Augusta. I was rather pleased to have been up watching the screen when the first intruder came and so was able to obtain a screenshot not only of the 2 eggs, but also of Samson with the fish AND of the intruder flying off in the background! I will let you know details of the birds when we receive information about their rings.

I have however been very remiss in not thanking the people helping to get everything ready for this season, bearing in mind the difficulties we have had. I’d like to thank Gen and Louise at Solwise, a super company based in Hull, who were fantastic in helping me sort through the various options when last year’s WiFi units died on us. Setting up a new system, virtually from scratch, necessitated my learning a lot of new information and they were incredible at supporting me and investigating options, even when it didn’t fall within their field of expertise. I’d also like to thank David Loveluck, a friend of a friend who helped with another stage of the electrics, even making special connectors for me. Then there was Björn who climbed the tree to replace the camera and suddenly found himself carrying out emergency repairs on the nest, which had lurched to a dangerous angle when some of its support branches had been snapped during an earlier storm. He was ably assisted by Malcolm and Kate at ground level, sending up equipment and a steady supply of appropriate wood to strengthen the nest foundations. It was pitch dark when Björn had finished, having been up there for over 6 hours. He descended with the illumination being provided by our car headlights! We couldn’t have got where we are without all these people, mostly volunteers, but all going above and beyond to achieve the goal of us being able to watch the ospreys safely working on raising a family in 2026. Thank you to them all.

The third and probably last egg will arrive Mon/Tue and then we have the long wait of incubation, usually of between 37-42 days. I’ll let you know when we have the full clutch and also any information we have about the intruders.

I have some good news and an apology. The news is that, after 16 days together, Samson and Augusta (Blue 500) have their first egg of 2026. It was laid either late yesterday or today (23rd) and Samson has been his normal enthusiastic self about taking as much of the incubation and guarding duties as he can. He has spent much of the time standing over the egg, rather than incubating it, which is common practice with the first and second eggs; concerted incubating doesn’t start in most cases until the clutch is complete. Augusta, on the other hand, has spent most of her time lying down in the nest, apart from when Samson does his naughty thing of teasing her with a fish by overflying the nest and then going off to eat part of it elsewhere.

She got quite ratty today and he realised that he probably had pushed her a little too far and he hurriedly handed over the majority of the fish, which she took to eat in peace. We might be able to narrow down the time frame a little if we can ascertain when the second egg is laid but the reason we can’t be more precise is explained in the next paragraph.

The apology is that, sadly, the camera is refusing to recognise the sd card that would hold the recordings of the activity on the nest. As the card is in the camera itself, it is inaccessible and it means that we will be unable to get recordings at all until we next go to the nest. Unless we have an emergency that requires us to climb the tree, and let’s be honest, we’ve had emergencies of one sort of another every year so far and it would be nice to omit the drama for 2026, we won’t be able to resolve the problem until any chicks we have are ringed. So we are left with screenshots when one of us is watching the action ”live” and distance shots from either ourselves or people visiting the site and kindly allowing us to use their photographs, like Bruce Carrington whose shots appear in this post.

I know this lack of coverage is unfortunate and means that reporting will be limited to when one of us is actually on site; we have had an incredibly frustrating start to the season but, thankfully, the most important part is that the birds are safely back and are on course to have a new family. Fish supplies are looking good so far this year and human repairs to the nest (followed by re-repairs by the ospreys!) should hopefully ensure a safe haven for that family. Anything else is a bonus and I will do my best to provide as much coverage as I can. If any of you are visiting and take pictures that you think we could use, the easiest way to contact me if I’m not there is to drop a note on the most recent blog and I’ll get in touch direct.

(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.

Lots of excitement yesterday evening when it was reported that there were 2 ospreys flying around the nest. I shot back but by the time I got there, there was only one and in the gathering gloom of an incoming heavy rainstorm I couldn’t make out enough details to positively identify who it was. What I could see was that it was a female, with a blue ring on her left leg and she seemed quite familiar with the nest. Was it 500/Augusta back?

I left after the rain started and with no further idea who it was we had up there on the nest but was back again this morning, and was encouraged to see a familiar sight as I drove in of an osprey sitting on the nest perch. By the time I got around to where I sit, there were 2 birds on the nest. Samson was doing his normal mantling/subservient act in between moving a few sticks around and the female joined him and did a bit of stick renovation as well. When she hopped back onto the nest perch I could see her ring clearly…but it was not 500! We were being visited by KX7, the star of Kielder’s nest 7 cam, and the reason she was familiar with the nest and Samson is that she was our non-breeding female from 2019 and has been on a visit several times in the years since. She started gently food begging (such a difference to 500’s raving) and Samson obediently flew off after a fumbled mating attempt during which she seemed receptive but Samson got his angles all wrong!

She disappeared from sight shortly after Samson thermalled away to fish downstream and wasn’t seen again, even when he brought back a nice looking grayling. He proceeded to eat it while keeping an eye open for her but, when she didn’t arrive, he took the opportunity to finish it off. I am advised that she appeared back on her own nest at about 1615, looking totally innocent, but we know better!

I’ll let you know of any further developments of this or other goings on at the nest when they occur. In the meantime, I’m grateful to K Ramsay for these photos of Samson flying around yesterday and then bringing in some decorations for the nest.

A very quick note as it’s late and I’m not long back home but I had to share the good news that Samson arrived back today, some 2 weeks earlier than last year. He’s already brought sticks to the nest and has engaged in some crow bashing. I don’t have any photos as yet because the camera is throwing a small temper tantrum but, if I throw enough money at the system I’m sure it will work eventually!!

Luckily, we had just finished doing some repairs to the nest following the severe battering it and the tree got during the various winter storms but Samson will no doubt not be satisfied and will furnish it himself in his own inimitable style.

I’m delighted and relieved that he’s back. All eyes to the skies for Augusta now.