Today Monty and Blue 3J have been together exactly one week.

Everything is looking good at the nest and we've had little disturbance over the last few days other than the odd migrating osprey passing through.

Where's Glesni?

There's one missing element however, a large fish-eating elephant is not in the room. Glesni isn't home yet.

If you were new to following the Dyfi Osprey Project and had just started watching the Live Streaming at the end of last week - nothing would really seem amiss. In fact, you would probably be thinking that this particular Dyfi osprey pair in mid Wales were getting on like a house on fire. And you'd be right.

Monty and Blue 3J - a brief dalliance or a more long-term arrangement?

Glesni is 12 days late if we used last year's arrival date as a starting point and around a week late if we took her average date of arrival going back four years. Either way you look at it, she's several days late.

We're not giving up on her yet, several other ospreys have turned up 10-12 days late recently and there are many more birds than usual yet to appear (including Clarach in Scotland) on some of the British 'public domain' nests. The weather further south on the migration path has been especially poor this year which accounts for most of these delays, we just have to wait and hope that Glesni is one of those birds that has been sitting the weather out in some secluded area of Spain/Portugal/France.

Time will tell, as it always does in nature; let's give her a few more days before giving up on her. The weather system changes over the weekend with southerly winds blowing up warm air by Monday. Fingers crossed.

The Welsh Nests

Despite some ospreys arriving back almost two weeks later than usual, all the other birds are now back at the other Welsh nests, including at nearby Clywedog where our friend John Williams from Natural Resources Wales has been observing the pair's behaviour, trying to establish whether the male there is in fact Dai Dot.

I've written many times about how difficult it is to identify ospreys as individuals, time will tell at Clywedog too whether the male there is indeed Dai. John's new 500mm lens should help too!

The Clywedog female, Delyth (nee Seren) photographed by John Williams this week

Blue 24 is still doing her rounds, but we haven't seen her for a couple of days now at Dyfi. Another cousin, Blue 5F, is also back in Wales in the Glaslyn Valley. She arrived back on Sunday and was seen on her usual Pont Croesor nest platform near BGGW's osprey visitor centre there. She has had two failed breeding attempts on this nest in 2016 and 2017 in a polygamous arrangement with Aran, the Glaslyn male - let's hope she finds another nest this year not in another male's territory. We've been stuck on four osprey pairs for too long in Wales now.

Blue 5F - photographed in her Gambian wintering grounds by Chris Wood

Looking Forward

Blue 3J has settled in very well on the Dyfi nest with Monty. Just over the last day or two we've seen her egg-cupping and nest arranging - classic pre-egg laying, breeding behaviours.

As the first full week of the osprey season comes to a close, we can be thankful that we have four breeding males and four breeding females back on active nests in Wales. By the end of the second full week we'll know whether all, or most, of these birds are the same as last year.

As I end this brief summary, Blue 3J is seeing off an intruder further down the Dyfi estuary as the light fades for the evening. I have a feeling the 2018 osprey opening-scene drama has got one final twist in it yet...  

Glesni - are you on your way...?