WOW - What a day!

Janine says to me first thing this morning, "I have a good feeling about today" and she was talking ospreys, not cakes.

Then she shows me this - the DOP diary for this day from 2010...

Literally two minutes later an osprey lands on the nest - it's Blue 3J, another Rutland female that, like her cousin Blue 24, is trying to find a nest and mate in Wales. She got very attached to a Scottish bird, Blue HR7, last year having unsuccessfully attempted to breed at her native Rutland the year before.

Blue 3J was not staying however, a couple of seconds and she was gone.

The 4K camera comes up with the goods - Blue leg ring, 3J

Next up, John Williams from Natural Resources Wales is on the phone, he has THREE ospreys at Clywedog!

We reckon Blue 24 was one of them and a blue ringed Scottish male. Blue 3J was probably the other one, sighted a few minutes before she appeared on the Dyfi nest, so the timings make sense.

Next we have two ospreys on the Dyfi, one of them a Scottish ringed male - has to be the same one, right?

Ringed Scottish male (blue ring/left leg) but moving too quickly to make out the ring number

The other bird is down the estuary over a mile away, but by lunch time we'd lost him.

Monty Returns

Then the main act - at 14:24 the DOP visitor centre and Observatory erupt. Shouting, screaming, crying - our amber-eyed Monty was back:

Was it Monty that we saw down the estuary earlier in the day? Who cares, he's back home safe and sound.

He didn't hang around long, 10 minutes later he flew down to the Glandyfi bend of the river and after some serious mobbing by crows and a black-backed gull, he successfully caught a flounder. He took it to the grassy bank of the Dyfi to eat it on the ground (sorry about the long range shots if you were watching the Live Streaming, we thought just a few pixels of Monty were better than nothing after seven months and two days away!).

Tale Twister

By early this evening came the twist in today's tale.

John had sorted his images he took of the Clywedog birds and sent some over for me to have a look at. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he said. I absolutely was!

Look at this....

Dai Dot?

It's just one photo, taken in poor light, but everything looks consistent to me with Dai's features. John also mentioned that the first thing that struck him when he saw this bird was the two prominent white plumage patterns above the beak.

Here's a better image of Dai Dot taken by Mark Wilson a few years ago..

Is it him? Is it Dai?

If I had to put money on it, I'd say I'm 80-90% confident it is. Let's see what the rest of the week brings first though, before we get too carried away.

If it is Dai, and the resident Clywedog male, Dylan, returns soon, the interaction between the birds will tell us a lot. The female's return, Delyth, should also give us a clearer picture.

Many thanks to John and Mark for the photos - Janine didn't quite get the "4 or 5" ospreys as she had hoped for, but tell you what, I'd settle for Monty's safe return and a decent chance that Dai Dot is still with us any day.

Glesni should be with us soon; found the keys yet?

Welcome home Monty - Croeso'n ôl cariad