1. Opening Times

We're still in winter timings right now (open Wednesday - Sunday), but change over to summer opening on Monday 24^th March. We'll be open 10:00 - 17:00 every day, including weekends and Bank Holidays, until September.

See here for more information regarding visiting us.

2. Entrance charge

We will keep the entrance charge the same this year as last year's prices. No increases.

• £7 adults
• £3.50 children under 16, free under 5
• £20 Season ticket - come as often as you like in 2025; £10 for kids
• Free Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust members

3. Nest perch

The nest perch did not winter too well, bits kept falling off. So in early March we removed and replaced it with a brand 'new' model.

Just like this

4. Caffi

Our caffi in the Dyfi Wildlife Centre will be open 10:00 - 15:30 every day for food; and up to 16:30 for teas/coffees/cakes.

We now do breakfasts from 10:00 - 12:00 on Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays, then lunches start at 12:00 - 15:30.

Lunches will be from 10:00 - 15:30 on Mondays - Thursdays, with a variety of Specials depending on what is in season. We strive to source as many ingredients as possible from as local as possible.

Vegetarian/vegan/gluten free etc all catered for.

Dhal with homemade pitta, pickled red cabbage topped with parsley & mango dressing

5. New hide

We have amazing plans to fully restore and upgrade our original tower hide - the (only) one we had for the first few years of DOP.

We're just waiting for the final pieces of a funding application to be finalised, fingers crossed...

Clearly, with the Observatory (2014) and DWC (2020), the original function of this hide has now been superseded with better facilities.

We'll build a habitat niche just in front of the new hide to attract insects, small mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds so that visitors can see some of the wildlife that are harder to see on the reserve in dense vegetation.

There will be cameras, of course, and a 8K TV inside with the ability to switch cameras to whichever has the best view at any given time. We'll have a volunteer stationed in this hide, at least for the busier times, fielding and answering questions. It will be open 11-months of the year, it will be fully insulated - and have a heater running off solar!

We'll build a small dry-stone wall for small mammals and reptiles and a massive bird bath - like an infinity pool for birds. Birders and photographers will love it.

The 'new' hide will be ground level with huge glass vistas to look through. It will be accessible to all, including wheelchairs. No more rickety timber stairs. We'll make a part of the glazing openable for photographers.

Think of the Wildlife Watching Window in the DWC, but better.

6. More and better videos

We'll try to produce more ospreys and general wildlife videos in 2025. These will be shown on either our DOP channel or Dyfi Wildlife Centre channel as well as in our Wildlife Cinema upstairs in the Galeri.

The new videos will see another uptick in quality and production value, and be more education-based. Most will have chapters including timestamps in the video description, so you can skip ahead to the bits you're most interested in if your time is short.

Like this:

7. Music

Putting music on nature videos is a controversial subject for some. If done wrong, it can get in the way of enjoying what you've clicked to enjoy.

But music on nature videos is ubiquitous. Try finding a David Attenborough documentary without music, for example.

We will put music on a small percentage of our videos going forward. If you're in the "music spoilt the video for me" camp, here are a few reasons why we (and everybody else) do it:

• Often there is no audio at all, just silence. This gives the impression there is a problem with the video whereas in reality there isn't
• Wildlife audio is often poor quality with wind noise and other distortions
• Sometimes in calm weather, there really isn't anything to hear, again giving the impression the the audio is faulty
• Editing scenes together that have different sound characteristics will sound jarring and absolutely awful
• Timelapses  (like the new perch video above) and slo motion video - it's impossible to have any natural audio
• Putting microphones right next to wildlife is difficult or impossible. Animals don't like being mic-ed up.
• When people are involved - nest works, ringing etc - you really don't want to listen to what is being said. We never swear, obviously.  

Like I said, doing it wrong can be disastrous. We'll do our best to get it right for those few videos you'll hear music on.

8. Live Streaming 2025

Going live on Saturday 22^nd - a week today.

After working well all winter, we've suddenly lost all audio signals to the nest. We'll have technicians working on this next week, we'll hopefully have a fix for when the LS goes live on the weekend.

This is where you need to be:

https://www.youtube.com/@DyfiOspreyProject

9. Live Streaming Appeal 2025

As you know, our cameras and Live Streaming is funded by our followers and supporters every year. We couldn't do this without you.

Gone are the days we used to get funding for this. Don't mention the B word.

Could you help us raise £25,000 to pay for this year's Live Streaming please? We take the dscision every year not to have our channel behind a paywall, thereby depriving people who genuinely cannot afford any money.

There are three main ways you can help:

1. Via JustGiving. They don't take a commission and you can use Gift Aid.

2. Via the DOP-specific PayPal Giving Fund. (Again, no commission and you can use Gift Aid once you've completed your donation).

3. By visiting in person or sending a cheque payable to ‘Dyfi Osprey Project’ to:

Dyfi Osprey Project
Cors Dyfi
Machynlleth
SY20 8SR

Thank you very much for your generosity. We are so excited about the 2025 season in our beautiful Dyfi Wildlife Centre - bet you are too.

10. We're still here!

It seems like an obvious and maybe odd thing to say, but we are still here, opening 11 months of the year, and from Monday-week, every day for the next six months.

The trading environment is getting tougher and tougher each year. So much so, I have never seen conditions like this in the 20 years I have been running osprey projects. It's brutal.

I don't want to get political, and never will, but let's just say that policy decisions taken over the last 10 years or so have been completely disastrous for businesses and charities that operate on the very low end of the economy in terms of finances.

Many local nature-based attractions around us are all closing down or partially closing. I think I'm right in saying this is true for many parts of the UK. 

We need your support more than ever in 2025. We're running at a deficit this year, but we're optimistic we can make it through another year.

Telyn and Idris will, by now, be hopefully on their way back from their winter holidays. Last year they returned on the 25^th and 30^th March respectively.

We can't wait to see them again, not long now..

Yma o hyd.