Tweed Valley ospreys take a step closer to leaving the nest

The young ospreys from the main nest have spent most of the week staying close to the vicinity of the nest area.

Tweed (706) has been the most stay at home of the youngsters and hasn’t ventured far in the past week.

Kirk (707) has stayed mostly close to the nest area but has had three-day trips to explore, on August 19 he went to Caberston Forest to the north of Walkerburn and was there at 12.30pm before heading off to the west back towards Peebles.

On August 20 he crossed the River Tweed and flew over the Peebles Hydro at 3pm and on August 21 he took a trip out to the Glen House Estate and was there about 2.20pm.

The next two days after that he stayed at the main nest area for most of the time.

Glen (708) was this week’s most adventurous bird as he crossed the three valleys, Tweed, Yarrow and into the Ettrick on August 19 and passed over Bowhill House before he too returned to the nest area and has remained there since.

Their dad PW3 is still working really hard to bring fish for his three sons and he is delivering them to the nest and so it makes sense for the young ospreys to be somewhere near when they are hungry.

We can see on camera when the young are hanging around, squawking and calling loudly when they are waiting for a fish to be brought in.

The birds and are being given whole fish to handle so that they can feed themselves.

In the whole of the Tweed Valley Osprey Project Area there were 13 occupied nest sites this year and nine of the sites were visited by the Environment team to ring the young ospreys.

Of the four sites where the chicks were not ringed, two of the sites were new nest sites and the ospreys had built their own nest.

It has been a productive year in terms of the number of ospreys raised in the area this year with a total of 32 ospreys reaching fledging stage.

This brings the number of ospreys raised in the Tweed Valley Osprey Project area since the start of the project to a total of 268.

Chicks from the backup nest. Photo: Tweed Valley Osprey Project

This year 22 osprey juveniles were ringed at nine of the nest sites.

All were fitted with blue darvic rings and BTO rings as well.

The ring numbers used were as follows on the main nest 706, 707, 708 and the birds named as Tweed, Kirk and Glen.

They also have trackers.

On the back up nest, the three chicks were ringed with darvics 698,699 and 719.

The west of Peebles nest chicks were fitted with rings 720, 721 and 722.

The single chick at Ancrum is darvic 688.

Another upper Tweed Valley single chick was ringed with darvic 723.

One of the nests with a brood of two in the south of the area had darvics 727 and 728.

The remaining three nests which were visited to ring the ospreys each had a brood of three and the darvics used were as follows (724, 725 and 726). (692, 693, 694), (695, 696 and 697).

This left 10 un-ringed ospreys from the remaining four nest sites where each had a brood of three apart from one nest with a single chick in it.

All of these young ospreys will be flying around this area now, most of their mothers will have already left on migration and they will be relying on their dads to feed them and keep on bringing fish until they leave to migrate.

There will only be a coupe of weeks left now before they are all likely to make their way out into the wider world and into the unknown.

We just hope that they have safe flights and manage to navigate their way through the hazards that they face on their travels.