Last week, when I posted the ‘fisheye’ view of inside the Dyfi osprey nest, I said I would blog this week about what Alan and I actually found in the nest.

Well, first of all, there was soil – loads of it. I’m always surprised about how much soil there is in an osprey’s nest at the end of a season. How does it get there? We saw both Monty and Nora bring plenty of sticks and branches to the nest, sometimes the odd cow-pat, but soil? Maybe it’s one of those life’s mysteries that is not meant to be solved, a bit like why didn't nature invent the wheel? Anyway, sprouting out of this soil there was plenty of grass and weeds!

Then, of course, there were fish scales, hundreds of them, if not more. We would expect to see these in the nest, of course, particularly considering that 47% of all the fish that Monty caught were Mullet, an especially scaly fish. All those old fish scales gave the nest a particularly pleasant aroma when the wind wafted in the wrong direction!

What we were particularly looking out for were ‘opercula’. The operculum is the hard, bony flap covering and protecting a fish's gills - we pick these up at the end of each season and put them in a display case to show visitors to the Project the following year; those of you that visited may have seen these in a small glass case. Not only were there plenty in the nest, but we also found around 20 opercula underneath the ash tree perch where Monty, particularly, liked to eat his dinner.

Other than very large scales, the opercula are the only parts of a fish that ospreys do not eat – they resemble a toe nail and have the same consistency. Have a look at this video of when Dulas, Einion, and Leri were around four and a half weeks old: Nora is feeding all three youngsters and towards the end of the clip she pulls off the Mullet’s operculum – rather than giving a potentially harmful food item to her chicks, she quickly discards it and continues feeding. A mother’s instinct, I guess..