Open All Hours

Along with our Learning Officer, Kim, I closed the DOP visitor centre for the final time in 2014 last Sunday afternoon. We’d finished off the year with a Solstice Sunset singing festival in the 360 Observatory; the sunset wasn’t much to write home about, but the singing by the ‘Côr y Gors’ choir most certainly was.

As we put things away for the last time in 2014, I found myself thinking of the year that had passed and the changes we had seen. It was one of those ‘Arkwright’ moments from the British comedy ‘Open All Hours’, where the miserly old man reminisces about the day’s events as he slowly brings his stock back to the shop at the end of a busy day.

Milestones

Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust is 32 years young this year and 2014 turned out to be one of the most sensational, exciting and seminal years of them all. But it almost wasn’t.
 
The Trust has been managing a 70 acre woodland, ‘Dolforwyn Woods’ for the past five years with an option to buy it outright at the end of those five years. Thousands of people and children access the woodland every year, but as the fifth and final year elapsed in 2014, only a fraction of the required purchase price had been raised. Following a hugely successful autumn appeal, most of the money has now been raised, and the purchase of the Dolforwyn Woods is taking place as I write. Thousands more people will now be able to visit this special woodland habitat for generations to come, a fantastic result for both people and wildlife.
 
Here’s a photograph taken almost exactly a year ago – mid December 2013:

We were running late with the new 360 Observatory build. Yes, of course we had factored in time for contingencies due to the unforgiving terrain we were attempting to build it in, but the wet, boggy swamp proved to be an even sterner test than we had envisaged. The huge beams weighing several tonnes each had to be transported to the site by hand and and then erected into place using nothing more than a few wires and a couple of pulleys. We were determined to build the Observatory in the most environmentally sensitive way possible, so that meant no destruction of habitat and certainly no heavy machinery, including cranes, which would have knocked several months off the construction time.
 
Then in January this year, came the winter storms which flooded the site on several occasions and blew one of the osprey nest cameras to the ground and destroyed it. We had to say goodbye to another three weeks of construction time.
 
To say the race was on is an understatement, we had to finish before the ospreys returned and we were months behind schedule. We tried to keep calm and put a happy face on for the public, but the strain was there if you looked into our eyes for long enough. We put the blood-pressure machine back in the cupboard for the first few months of 2014, there wasn’t enough mercury in it anyway.
 
Winter storms do their best to hamper the Observatory build.

Miraculously, we opened the Observatory to the public just a few months later on Good Friday. If you listened closely enough, you could just about hear the whole of Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust breathing a sigh of relief in the background. Staff and volunteers had joined forces and helped with the latter stages of construction, it was team effort and cooperative working at its best.
 
DOP volunteers gather in the new 360 Observatory.

Dyfi Blues

Thinking that Glesni, with her Blue 12 ring on her right leg, might be back before Monty, we scoured the skies in late March and early April for a blue ringed osprey and sure enough on March 31st, we found one. But it wasn’t Glesni though; it was her cousin, Blue 24.
 
Blue 24 was after her cousin’s nest and mate, Monty.

Blue 24 had been around in 2013 also and knew exactly what was on offer on the Dyfi, but neither of the regular tenants were back from migration so Blue 24 chose instead to pair up with another Dyfi regular, Dai Dot.
 
On the pull: Dai Dot impresses Blue 24 with his ‘His & Hers - I can catch two fish’ trick.

Gwynant and Deri

Glesni and Monty did eventually arrive back, of course, and following the mother of all osprey fights between the two cousins, which lasted a whole week, we did get back to some form of normality. Despite Blue 24’s best efforts to disrupt the breeding season, Monty sired two healthy offspring, Gwynant and Deri. They would be Glesni’s third and fourth youngsters and Gwynant would be her first son.
 
Gwynant and Deri being ringed in July

The ospreys are always the main attraction, of course, but just for one year, I think what made 2014 special for me was what was happening 200 metres away from the nest - in the Observatory.
 
Rarely in this country can we get within close proximity of breeding ospreys without causing them harm or disruption, we have our predecessor’s centuries worth of mindless persecution to thank for that. But the 360 Observatory was built in such a way that for the first time in Wales, we could see these amazing birds at relatively close quarters.

Watching people’s reactions, especially those of children, as they saw Monty and Glesni for the first time is something I will never forget. Seeing a child run towards the huge Observatory window, pointing at the osprey nest and shouting excitedly at their parents, “LOOK, LOOK – I CAN SEE MONTY AND GLESNI” is something that is hard to put into words. It’s impossible to put a value on.
 
With the naked eye we could see the Dyfi ospreys go about their daily routines, we could see Blue 24 perched a few hundred yards away and we could see Monty fishing down the Dyfi estuary as clear as day. Binoculars made viewing even better and with a decent telescope we could see the iris dots in Monty’s eyes! If you were lucky enough, he would fly straight over the Observatory, so close, you could hear his wing beats.
 
Close encounter – osprey watching like never before

Looking Up

Despite all the adulation and excitement that we experienced in 2014, there was one tiny elephant in the room that was difficult to ignore.
 
Having no electricity at the 360 Observatory meant that building a lift to the top floor was impossible. We looked at all sorts of eccentric options, but they were either too costly, too cumbersome, or too difficult to implement. We had built the first floor on stilts, over 2m high so that wheelchair users could have an elevated view over the reserve, we had also made the 550m of boardwalk extra wide so that two wheelchairs could pass each other safely.
 
Several people had complained to myself and other staff and volunteers about not being able to get wheelchairs to the top floor. One particular couple were quite vociferous and if I’m honest, quite rude. After being to the top of the Observatory themselves, they were upset that a close relative of theirs could not experience the same views of the ospreys and the reserve as they could.
 
We built the stairs with low gradients and wide staging levels for easier access..

In a way, I’m glad this happened, despite being quite upset at the time. Their anger was amplified once they had got to the upper level and saw what an amazing place it was; I saw it as a compliment in a way, albeit a rather anomalous one.
 
Today on Christmas Day, a time of surprises and sharing, Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust can announce that the grant funding applications that we had applied for in the autumn have been successful. In 2015, we will connect the 360 Observatory with electricity for the first time and we will build a platform lift from the lower level to the upper level for wheelchair users and people who find stairs too difficult to climb.
 
In 2015, the 360 Observatory, built in the middle of a peat bog, will truly be a place for all to visit, without exception.

And Finally…

Arkwright sold many things in his corner shop and likewise, we do lots of things in the Observatory. It’s not just about beans and ospreys.
 
A few weeks ago, visitors were somewhat amazed and bewildered to hear what sounded like a mobile phone ringing, emanating from the osprey nest. There were two big birds on the nest, bigger than buzzards, but they weren’t ospreys.
 
We had never heard anything like it before and ran a quick competition on our DOP Facebook page – this is what was making the strange calls…

Many congratulations to Mark Hallbury for correctly answering Raven, please get in touch.
 
2015 promises to be another exciting year. Will we see Blue 24 again? What will her strategy be this time around? Will Monty and Glesni arrive earlier than they did this year, will they produce three eggs for the first time?
 
We also have the small matter of some old friends returning. Will we see Einion? He would be four years old in 2015. Then we have these two ladies – will we see them again for the first time in two years?
 
 Clarach and Cerist – the two youngsters of 2013.

As we sign off for another year, a year in which we produced our first ever DOP Calendar (and hopefully not the last!), it won’t be long again before the show gets back on the road. Just over nine weeks in fact.
 
The Dyfi Osprey Project will open once again, super early on St David’s Day – March 1st in the new year. We may not have staff nurse Gladys Emmanuel on show, but we will have plenty of other things including Live Streaming and of course, the ospreys themselves a short time later. Sufferers of ospreyitis will have a quick cure in 2015.
 
I’m off to put the sprouts on with some violin music playing in the background. After dinner I have a banjo that a friend has lent me to try and master, and later on this evening I’m going to start reading a new osprey book that I have treated myself to this Christmas. I haven’t read it yet.
 
Whatever you are doing, wherever you are in the world, all of us at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust wish you a great Christmas and peace, happiness and health for 2015.
 
Nadolig Llawen i Chi Gyd.