Here are a few updates at the end of March.

Blue 24 is Back!

At 13:54 on 24th March, our old friend Blue 24 returned to the Dyfi. This date is the earliest recorded of an osprey on the Dyfi nest - Nora in 2012 being the other record-holder with the same date in 2012.

Glesni's cousin is the first to test out the new 2017 nest perch - in 4K resolution!

Second Cors Dyfi Nest

In 2016, Blue 24 laid three eggs in another nest platform on Cors Dyfi that was too close to the primary nest in a polygamous relationship with Monty. These rarely if ever succeed in the UK (although they occasionally do in some other osprey populations around the world).

Based on photographic evidence, we said at the time that we'd ask regulatory and legal permission over the winter to remove this nest, and we did. A licence was issued at the end of February and yesterday morning we removed it.

The Cors Dyfi nest is hauled down under licence

We want to give Blue 24 the best possible chance of attracting a mate and breeding for herself with her own mate. She is seven years old this year and we'll hopefully have a few more males around if some of the birds from 2014/5 return. Look out for another blog on this next week.

Live Streaming

We started a day earlier than planned, Friday 24th March, but with a few teething problems.

Since Friday we've changed servers to eliminate the stuttering and restored the audio feed, although it is a bit crackly. We're looking into this.

We've also completely eliminated the compression (a necessary evil for live streaming with low broadband speeds) and raised the bit-rate. With the fibre broadband connection we have at DOP this year, the pictures will be the best we've ever had.

Blue 24 caught at 60 frames per second on the new Larch Cam

A new, very powerful PC is being built at the moment that is optimised to deal with high definition and 4K resolution cameras. This encoder PC should give another tweak in LS performance - less pixelation, less digital artefacts and blurriness, more clarity and colour gamut.

Network Rail have also kindly replaced our electrical supply to the nest with new infrastructure - many thanks Ian and Gavin at Network Rail. We took advantage of a four-hour break in the electricity yesterday to replace the dome on the current LS camera. The smudges and scratches have now gone.

We've started the LS with CAM 2 as usual, that's the one that is low down pointing north straight across the nest. We'll change cameras throughout the season to give you the best views.

Live Streaming Appeal

We've just topped £13,000 - thank you everyone that has donated, we're two-thirds of the way there in just three weeks. We hope you can see, and will continue to see, improvements in the Live Streaming this year. We've worked hard over the winter to design the best possible viewing experience - and there's more to come!

Stunning - Blue 24 clearly impressed with the new camera set-up. 50p

Monty and Glesni

The stars of the show are hopefully on their way.

Neither Monty nor Glesni have ever returned in March - they are relatively late returners considering they breed so far south in the UK. They usually return during the first week in April, so not long now...

Finally, a lot of people including newer ospreys fans found this family tree useful on Facebook last week - here it is again. We've already seen Clarach return last year - who will be next...?

Dyfi Ospreys Family Tree