Return of an icon
Here, Ruth celebrates one of the birding world’s best success stories: the rise of the Osprey
Join Ruth Miller as she celebrates the rise of the iconic Osprey, and enjoys great views of it from her home!
Picture the scene. We are quietly working on our computers when suddenly outside a commotion starts up. We rush to the window and look out across the rooftops of Llandudno. Every single Herring Gull, and there are a lot in Llandudno, is up in the sky, wheeling and calling vociferously. Jackdaws are swooping around, and even Feral Pigeons are flapping about in panic.
We have learned to recognise the signs from our avian early warning system.
This pandemonium means just one thing: Osprey!
We scan the sky frantically, trying to work out from the panicking gulls which way the Osprey is coming. Then we spot it, deep wingbeats as this wonderful raptor powers across the sky, over the town and towards the limestone headland of the Great Orme behind us as it migrates north.
We follow the Osprey’s progress from our window, getting a fantastic view of this beautiful bird until we lose sight of it over the headland. Gradually the gulls calm down and settle back among the chimney pots, feathers ruffled but no harm done.
It is incredible to think how much things have changed for the better in terms of UK Ospreys. Once persecuted to extinction in the UK, in 1954 a pair tried to nest near Loch Garten in the Scottish Highlands. For several successive years, the nest was sadly raided by egg collectors; but in 1959, an intense 24-hour watch over the nest prevented any egg thefts, and three chicks were successfully reared.
The then Director of RSPB Scotland, George Waterston, took the unprecedented move to allow public viewing of the nest site
rather than keeping it under wraps. This not only indirectly increased the level of protection with so many people knowing about the site, but also raised awareness of Ospreys and their dire situation. Every spring since then, teams of volunteers have made the pilgrimage to Loch Garten to look after the nest site, while thousands of visitors come to watch from the visitor centre, as the Osprey family story plays out for the crowds.
Safe place to nest
Now, there are some 250 breeding pairs of Ospreys across the UK, a figure inconceivable back in the 1950s. We have four nesting pairs in mid and north Wales, that are known about in public circles; and perhaps our favourite Osprey Project is in the Glaslyn Valley.
Clearly Ospreys have taste: this is a particularly scenic part of Wales, comprising a lowland area in the bowl of the hills of Snowdonia, with the fish-rich Glaslyn River flowing through on its way to the sea, just beyond nearby Porthmadog. More importantly, it has just what an Osprey is looking for in spring: a safe place to nest and a ready source of food nearby.
A pair of Ospreys first nested here in 2004, with a watch being set up immediately by the RSPB to protect Wales’s first breeding pair. That natural nest was unfortunately blown down in a storm and the two chicks were sadly lost, so in preparation for the following year, a nest platform was created with a CCTV camera installed to relay the action to a viewing hide at a safe distance.
In 2005, two chicks were successfully fledged, and from then on, the Ospreys continued to return every year. In 2014, the project was officially handed over by the RSPB to the local community, with the charity Bywyd Gwyllt Glaslyn Wildlife created to manage the project and they, and the Ospreys there, have continued from strength to strength. Not only have the birds returned each year, successfully raising two or three chicks each time, but Glaslyn-bred Ospreys, both first and second-generation, have been logged returning to breed elsewhere in the UK. Of course, in the current restricted circumstances, we can’t get our Osprey nesting fix in person, but thanks to technology, we can log on to the livestreaming camera glaslynwildlife.co.uk/live and enjoy great views from our own sofa.
Mind you, it seems that this year, the Ospreys are coming to us. Literally as
I wrote that last line, I heard a sudden crescendo in the Herring Gull calls outside. I dashed to the window and there was an Osprey flying over the town heading north. Unusually, this bird did not fly straight towards the Great Orme. Instead it circled over the bay, gradually gaining in height with a cloud of gulls and Jackdaws buzzing around underneath it like an ineffectual cloud of midges. We watched it circle higher and higher until we lost sight of it in the cloud. How amazing! Osprey number five seen from our window and just as I was writing about them.
That volunteer protection team in Loch Garten in the 1950s would probably have never have imagined in their wildest dreams that Ospreys would return to our country in such incredible numbers, but they should be proud that their efforts sowed the seed for the return of these iconic birds of prey, which the public have taken to their hearts.
Ruth Miller is one half of The Biggest Twitch team, and along with partner Alan Davies, set the then world record for most bird species seen in a year – 4,341, in 2008, an experience they wrote about in their book, The Biggest Twitch. Indeed, Ruth is still the female world record-holder! As well as her work as a tour leader, she is the author of the Birds, Boots and Butties books, on walking, birding and tea-drinking in North Wales, and previously worked as the RSPB’s head of trading. She lives in North Wales. birdwatchingtrips.co.uk