Blue 3J laid an egg at 09:47 this morning

Today is DAY 16 of Blue 3J and Monty's relationship and the egg arrived right about where you would eggspect - here's a list of all the other eggs laid at the Dyfi nest to date with a column representing previous first-mating-to-egg laid timespan:

The mathematicians amongst you will already worked out, I'm sure, that this first egg is due to hatch on 29th May, but there's a lot of water to flow down the Dyfi River before then.

Glesni

It is now looking highly unlikely that Glesni will return. A couple of hours before her cousin Blue 3J laid her egg this morning, here's what I wrote on Facebook:

So, let's see out the rest of this week before we speculate any more; since I wrote that Facebook update this morning, Delilah - a female ospreys from the Scottish Borders, has turned up today, two whole weeks later than last year!

Blue 3J will hopefully have laid at least one more egg before the week is out, hopefully two (eggspect these Wednesday and Saturday morning) and if Glesni is still not back, we'll think about naming Blue 3J and let you have a vote on the matter as I mentioned in the last blog.

Live Streaming

A few people have been complaining that their Live Streaming is stuttering, freezing or worst. Today we lowered the resolution so that everybody can have a chance of seeing Blue 3J with her new egg; people with very low dial-up speed internet can now view the Dyfi ospreys.

Many things can cause their picture to stutter, including processor, graphics card, poor internet connection and a host of other things in a very complicated chain. The osprey stream is leaving DOP fine, indeed most people experience little or no issues.

While not ideal, this will hopefully be a short-term solution. I'll try and find some time this week to have another go at finding an alternative. We should also have an update on the Chat.

Blue 3J

One of the most reassuring elements of the last two weeks in amongst the technical issues and the emotional despair of Glesni not coming back is how completely at home Blue 3J has looked.

She's acclimatised well to the train track 55m away, bonded with Monty as if he's been her partner for years and has even stopped looking at the cameras now when she hears movement. Even after laying her egg this morning she got right down to incubating it, periodically getting up to make sure everything is okay, turning it around and ensuring she has enough soft nest material which is so important at this stage of the breeding cycle.

Blue 3J get up to turn her egg over

Not all ospreys incubate their first egg in a clutch, Blue 3J seems to be one of those females that do.

This is not her 'first ever' egg, so no record there; she laid one in 2016 at a Rutland nest with a local male Blue 51(11) but both birds, and egg, were displaced off the nest by a pair of Egyptian geese.

Today's egg does hold another record however:

Blue 3J is the first osprey that we know of to have laid an egg in both England and Wales. Of course, ospreys don't see borders - perhaps a lesson for all of us there.

Here's a short video of Blue 3J's record-breaking egg this morning, courtesy of one very cosmopolitan young osprey. The egg was half way out before Monty decided to try and mate with her!