The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Joy as two Loch of Lowes osprey chicks take to sky
Young birds take flight from Perthshire nesting site
The osprey chicks of the season at one of Scotland’s most famous nests have made their maiden flight – just 53 days after being born.
Female osprey LF12 – known to twitchers as Lassie – hatched two male chicks on her nest at the Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) Loch of the Lowes reserve near Dunkeld.
Hundreds of people worldwide watched the oldest fledge the nest via the organisation’s nest-cam.
And later in the day, the second chick took its maiden flight.
Rab Potter, the SWT’s reserve manager, said yesterday the first young raptor fledged early on Saturday morning, and has since spent a significant amount of time flying around the loch and perching in nearby trees before its sibling followed its example.
Both chicks have spent the last few weeks stretching their wing muscles and briefly hovering on the nest in preparation for flight.
Mr Potter said: “It is truly satisfying to see these magnificent birds complete a successful season after thousands of long hours spent by our staff and volunteers protecting the nest from human disturbance.
“It is always hard to believe that they are only a few weeks’ old when they do begin to fly around the reserve.”
The chicks have been ringed by a licensed bird ringer. They were given the ring numbers PT0 and LN1 (1), and both birds are believed to be male.
Parent birds Lassie and her partner LM12 (known as Laddie) have been breeding together at Loch of the Lowes since 2015.
They have successfully raised 10 chicks in that time.
This year’s pair are likely to migrate in late August, possibly to Africa, before hopefully returning to Scotland in two or three years.
Only around 50% of osprey chicks make it through the first two years however, as they face a number of challenges during migration, including predation and finding food.
Ospreys were extinct in Britain for much of the 20th Century. They began to recover in the 1960s and around 260 pairs of ospreys now breed in the UK each summer, mostly in Scotland.
This recovery is thanks to the efforts of conservation charities including the Scottish Wildlife Trust, whose Osprey Protection Programme is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.