All the Dyfi ospreys have departed for another year
We’ve had no definitive sightings of Monty or Blue 24 since Saturday 2nd September. Blue 24 made herself quite at home around the nest before leaving the larch perch at 8.39am.
Blue 24 looking across the Dyfi valley from the top of the larch
Blue 24. © MWT
Having once again been ‘reacquainted’ with Blue 24, Monty took off from the larch perch at 8.59am, meaning that this year we have had the pleasure of his company for precisely five months and one day. He flew down across the marsh and disappeared out of sight, leaving our screens until next spring.
One of the final photos taken of Monty this year
Monty. © MWT
This year was Monty’s seventh season as the resident breeding male on the Dyfi, and it has to go down as one of his most successful years to date. Arriving shortly after Glesni on April 1st, he has yet again defended this highly sought-after territory on the Dyfi, whilst protecting and providing for his growing family.
Monty and Glesni managed to raise three healthy chicks this year, bringing his grand total of chicks migrating from the Dyfi to 15. Though we currently only have confirmation of one Dyfi chick returning to the UK (Clarach), this is not to say she is the only one. We will continue to keep a watchful eye on the nest as there is still a very good chance intruding ospreys will come for a look around, especially now that all of our birds have gone.
No ospreys have landed since Monty’s departure, but this beautiful female greater spotted woodpecker came for lunch on the larch today!
We all have that one chick we long to see again, and we can only hope that the other Dyfi graduates will be as obliging as Clarach has been in dangling their darvics in front of a lens!
The Dyfi Family Tree
As mentioned in previous posts, 2017 marked the beginning of an exciting new chapter in osprey conservation. A brand new translocation project was initiated by the Roy Dennis Foundation, and in the past week they have announced that the first chick to fledge, LS7, has set off on migration.
We hope that in years to come, some of the Poole Harbour chicks will return to where they now consider home, attracting other ospreys as they pass over the area to start recolonising the south of England.
As we shut up shop for the last time this year, we finally have a moment to stop and look back on the season we’ve had. To date this year, we have accumulated a massive 8,399 hours from over 100 volunteers (only 361 hours, or 15 days, short of a full year!), and we still have another four months of the year left to go! Absolutely incredible.
From all of us here at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, we’d like to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who has given their time to make the project what it is. Volunteers, followers, citizen scientists, visitors; you have all contributed to the running of the project and although we say it every year, we genuinely could not do it without you all.
We hope you all get a well-earned rest over winter (ospreys included!), and are ready again for kick off next March.
Emyr: I would also like to extend our thanks. To Alwyn and Karis whose last day it was today until next spring, to all our volunteers who have been simply the best yet again, and finally to you...
We've welcomed almost 40,000 visitors to DOP again this year, spoken to everyone of them and engaged with countless thousands more on Chat, Facebook, Twitter, Messages, Emails and probably a lot more stuff that I don't know the name of. I say at the start of every year that this next DOP will be the best ever - you can be the judge of that for 2017, but I cannot be more pleased with the way things have turned out.
Karis and volunteer Thom take the DOP signs down late Sunday afternoon
We had a rough year in 2016 with Blue 24's failed clutch of three eggs, a dud egg on the Dyfi nest, and of course the tragic demise of Ceri. Just one fledgling from six eggs.
Moving the second platform over the winter undoubtedly made a difference, we could see tangible differences in Blue 24's behaviours once all the birds had returned by 1st April. Five months on following the platform changes, Monty and Glesni have raised three beautiful fledglings on the Dyfi nest with much less disruption and Blue 24 looks like she may be on the verge of a new partnership with another male 40 miles north east.
It can be a harrowing game this and we have to take the rough with the smooth, that's nature. We are so blessed to have witnessed Aeron, Menai, and Eitha grow up in front of our very eyes from newly laid eggs to tiny bundles of wet feathers to screaming, beautiful fledglings ready to take on the world.
Aeron flies back to the nest and his two younger sisters
Eitha (left), Aeron, Menai. © MWT
It was rough last year, we've gladly taken the smooth this summer.
Janine, Kim and I will be taking a couple of weeks off in September, but we'll soon be back, batteries fully charged for the autumn and winter ahead. This is some of the stuff we'll be doing over the next few months by the way.
But seeing as this is Monty's blog, let's finish with him, and, just one last video of some magical Monty moments filmed over the last few days.
Monty stayed around on the Dyfi for one whole week after the last member of his family, Eitha, left last Saturday. Every year it's become a tradition to 'make the most of him', absorbing and relishing every second we have with him in case it's our last glimpse we get for that year. What would Monty think of all this craziness if there was a way of telling him?
Everybody's talkin' about him, yet he doesn't hear a word they're saying. People stopping and staring, yet he can't see any of their faces.
Monty has left the pouring rain of Wales, no doubt banking off of the northeast winds that will take him to a place where the sun keeps shining.
