Joy as osprey lays her first egg of season at Perthshire reserve
NCO is expected to produce more eggs in coming days
The first osprey egg of the season has been laid at a Perthshire wildlife reserve.
Female osprey NC0 laid the mottled egg - which is around the size of a duck’s egg - at the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Loch of the Lowes Wildlife Reserve at 10.48am on Wednesday.
It appeared after a six-minute labour during a lull in the strong winds that the ospreys have had to endure in recent days.
Female ospreys typically lay between two and three eggs in a season, so further eggs are expected in the coming days.
NC0 will stay on the nest to incubate her eggs for around five to six weeks before they hatch.
The Trust’s Perthshire Ranger, Sara Rasmussen, said: “We are delighted that NC0 has laid her first egg of the season despite the strong winds that have been battering the nest of late.
“This is a crucial point in the season when an osprey pair must work as a team. If the eggs are left uncovered they can cool quickly, reducing the chances of successful hatching. Fortunately, we’ve seen this pair successful raise seven chicks together in the last four years so they have already demonstrated that they can do that.”
During the incubation period, a female osprey will incubate the eggs for around 80 per cent of the time, with the male taking over for brief periods while the female feeds on the fish that he brings to the nest.
We told you at the start of the month how the couple had reunited at the Perthshire reserve.
Female NC0 and male LM12, mates for the past four years, have fledged seven chicks during that time.
When NC0 arrived back on March 8 there was concern that LM12, since he is aged between 13 and 14, might not return to Scotland after wintering thousands of miles away in either Iberia or West Africa. The average osprey lifespan is around 14 to 15 years old in the wild.
But on March 27 LM12 returned to the nest at 4.38pm for his 13th breeding season.
LM12 has raised 21 chicks in total at Loch of the Lowes.
This year is NC0’S and LM12’S fifth breeding season together at their lochside nest near Dunkeld.
Ospreys were extinct in Britain for much of the 20th Century.
They began to recover in the 1960s and an estimated 300 pairs of ospreys now breed in the UK each summer.
Most of these birds migrate to West Africa but some overwinter in Spain and Portugal.
The recovery of ospreys is due to the efforts of conservation charities including the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
we are delighted that NC0 has laid her first egg of the season despite strong winds...