Many thanks for all the name suggestions - we had over 200 to pick from. Here are the names we chose with each bird's weight.

🐣 - Chick 1 – 🟦 6B1: Gwenlais (Female - 1935g)

🐣🐣 - Chick 2 – 🟦 6B2: Coron (Female - 2005g)

🐣🐣🐣 - Chick 3 – 🟦 6B3: Senni (Male - 1545g)

So the first two chicks are females and Bobby Bach this year, the younger 'small' one, is a boy. 

These are the biggest chicks we've ever recorded at this nest, with Coron being the first we've ever weighed over the 2Kg mark. 

Nest Records:

CORON – largest chick ever recorded (2005g)

GWENLAIS – 2nd largest chick ever recorded (1935g)

SENNI – 3rd largest male ever recorded (1545g) out of 17 in all. He is Bobby “Bach”

The table below illustrates just how big these birds are compared to previous years:

For your records and perusal, here is the up-to-date Dyfi Family Tree with our new birds on it.

Why so BIG?

There are probably three reasons:

1. Parenting: Telyn and Idris are now an established pair and experienced parents. This leads to more successful parenting with less mistakes.
2. Weather: I've mentioned a few times we've had Goldilocks weather again this year. No extremes, no summer storms, not too hot, just right. Goldilocks weather is conducive to prey availability and optimal chick growth.
3. It's the trout, stupid: We've seen more trout than in any other season so far in 2024. Brown and sea trout contain more calories per unit weight than the usual staple at this nest - mullet and flounder. And we all know what happens if you consume a lot of calories.

Gwenlais, Coron and Senni were 34.6, 33.4 and 31.5 days old when we ringed them. They will fledge at 49 days old and beyond, but expect the two girls to take a lot longer than that. These are heavy cargo aircraft.

Immense thanks to Tony Cross for ringing our chicks again this year and also to Naomi (trainee ringer) and Dulcie our People Engagement Officer. The guys at Dyfed CCTV also deserve a warm round of applause - they successfully fixed our microphones in record time under the nest while we were ringing the chicks. Diolch Joe, Gary and Elliott.

Here's the ringing video for 2024. Music is Lenny by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Science Sunday (post from 20th June, three days after ringing)

So now we know we recorded the heaviest two chicks ever on this nest during ringing this week, how do our three chicks from this year compare to those of previous years? We have now ringed 34 in total going back all the way to 2011.

To compare anything to anything scientifically, you need to have everything standardised, so as far as weighing living birds in concerned, they all need, ideally, to be weighed at the exact same age. 

Well, that would mean three trips to the nest each year at very precise timepoints, and we certainly aren't going to do that.

So, the best way is to plot each birds' weight as a scatter plot with age on one axis and weight on another. And voilà, here it is below...

So, what does this scatter plot tell us?

1. Females (red dots) are heavier than males, on average. Something we knew anyway (most birds of prey have this gender size dimorphism), but it's good to see it play out on a chart like this.

2. Once osprey chicks reach a certain age - around five weeks old, they don’t really put on any more body weight for a while, it’s feather growth after this point. If anything, they lose a bit of body weight, but this will reverse again just before migration as hyperphagia kicks in (overeating). August is a very noisy time on the nest.

3. The separate chart (top right) is what we show each year - it illustrates that huge growth rate between two and four weeks of age before plateauing off slightly. The scatter plot elegantly verifies this.

4. The delta between the lightest and heaviest chick is 705g: Brenig in 2015 (1300g) and Coron in 2024 (2005g). So Coron is 54% heavier than Brenig was.

Now, there are always caveats. Different parents, different ages when weighed, different weather each year, different prey availability, males vs female, but these we can’t control for.

The scatter plot is not perfect, but it’s the best, scientifically, that is achievable. And it does, albeit imperfectly, show interesting growth trends in young ospreys at the Dyfi nest over the last 14 successive years.