The female arrived almost a week after her mate

A pair of breeding ospreys, who last year parented the first chicks born in Northumberland for more than 200 years, have been reunited in the county.

The female arrived at a specially-created tree-top nesting site in Kielder Forest almost a week after her partner returned.

Three chicks were raised at the site last year and ornithologists hope more could appear this time round.

Footage of the nest is being streamed to visitors at Kielder Castle.

'Grandstand view'

Elizabeth Rowark, director of the Kielder Partnership, said: "There are never any guarantees with wildlife, so the fact that the couple are back safely from sub-Saharan Africa and that they are using the same nest where we have installed cameras is tremendous news.

"The prospect of more chicks being born has got everyone very excited and the public will be able to enjoy a grandstand view."

Osprey courtship often involves the male attempting to woo his partner by providing a tasty fish. The bird stays faithful both to nest and mate.

Accounts from the 18th Century refer to "fish-eating hawks" in Northumberland, which were probably ospreys, but there have been no records of the bird breeding in the county for more than 200 years.

The Kielder pair were thought to originate from the expanding Scottish population.

Ospreys were once distributed widely, but persecution resulted in the species becoming extinct in England as a breeding bird in 1840 and in Scotland in 1916.

Some birds re-colonised Scotland in the 1950s and today there are about 200 pairs.

They have re-colonised the Lake District and have been re-introduced at Rutland Water in the East Midlands.

Someone just zoomed in

Sorry, I meant to crop it. 

I've been getting this a lot today also. 10 or more frames in a row. Main cam mostly.

She reminds me of Mariah.

It got cold. I like it after the 90 plus scorcher we had on Wed & Thurs...Too soon for that.

[Could Mariah have been the third falcon seen yesterday? Whoever it was, I'm anxiously awaiting more details from the fighting on Thurs. - so far it hasn't been mentioned again, at least not that I saw. I'm guessing the watchers are looking closely at their photos before posting???Dot in PA]

Could Mariah have been the third falcon seen yesterday?  Whoever it was, I'm anxiously awaiting more details from the fighting on Thurs. - so far it hasn't been mentioned again, at least not that I saw.  I'm guessing the watchers are looking closely at their photos before posting???

Dot in PA

I was wondering the same Dot. Maybe she keeps trying to come back and gets chased out. Then again, she might remember last Easter. Do they remember?

[Re: red sentence - I'm all for that! Do you think GVAS can get a grant for backpacks instead of transmitters?~Joyce]

This is wonderful news!!  Amazing how life goes on and we must adapt.  But it will be sooo different watching a new pair, but exciting too.  Everyone is on a new page this year -- where will the eyases go on their first flights?  Will they find the gorge?  No more smokestacks.  Will the watchers have to invest in jet-propelled backpacks to follow the younguns???   Stay tuned!
Vandrefalk

Re: red sentence - I'm all for that!  Do you think GVAS can get a grant for backpacks instead of transmitters?

~Joyce

http://jumpingstilts.com/jumping-stilts/extreme-sports/?gclid=CIey_Ojt-qACFQk65QodFFSCwg

Maybe you can all get a pair of these!

Who would have thought that beachcombing could be oh so much more interesting if you looked at the sand?

  Thanks

I'll just sit a spell

Just heard Brian H call into the Bob Lonsberry radio show to update him and everyone within range of WHAM's 50kW transmitter about Beauty, Archer and the new egg.  Great work Brian!

Go Brian! 

Barn owl chicks avoid fights by working out who most deserves the next meal while mum and dad are away catching it. Very wise, says John Whitfield.

John Whitfield

Everyone knows that you should only thump your little sister when your parents aren't looking. Baby barn owls, however, are made of nobler stuff. Working at the University of Bern in Switzerland, Alexandre Roulin and colleagues have found that, when their parents leave them to go hunting, chicks use the time to negotiate who gets the next meal.

Unlike most other birds, barn owl (Tyto alba) chicks make begging calls even when their parents are out of earshot. Normally, nestlings only yell 'feed me' when their parents show up with food, to let them know how hungry they are, and to compete with each other over who gets the morsel.

In Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Roulin and colleagues describe how they tested whether between-meal begging really was barn owl chicks' way of communicating with one another.

Taking broods of two, they gave one chick extra mice during the day, while the other went hungry. Then they measured how this difference in hunger affected the chicks' vociferousness.

Barn owls deliver about one food item every hour, giving each mouse, vole or whatever to a single chick. Before a parent arrived with the first meal of the night, chicks with a well-fed nest mate made more noise than those in broods where both had gone hungry.

In nearly all cases, the pushier chick got fed. When mum or dad disappeared, it piped down, whereas the chick that had missed out piped up, and tended to get the next prey item. Thus, the food was shared out through the night.

So it seems that in barn owls at least, chicks beg to each other, as well as to their parents. This lets them tell each other how badly they want the next meal, and modify their behaviour accordingly when it arrives.

Barn owls lay anything from two to nine eggs, and so, with the parents' one-at-a-time method of sharing food, chicks in large broods may have a lengthy wait for a meal. Roulin and colleagues temporarily increased or decreased brood size, to see how it affected negotiations.

They found that chicks became less vocal in larger broods and more vocal in smaller broods. It seems counterintuitive that an increase in competition should result in a decrease in between-chick begging. The researchers believe that chicks are quieter because the next prey item has become more valuable to their nest mates.

"It would be best for nestlings to know whether they have a chance of getting the prey item," says Roulin, "otherwise they will spend hours competing for nothing."

Although begging is tiring, it may be better to settle contests before food arrives, keeping violence and wasted energy to a minimum. A continual process of low-key communication might prevent competition becoming too intense.

"I think that nobody realized that negotiation may take place simply because researchers concentrate on nestling behaviour in the presence of the parents," says Roulin.

Negotiation could be widespread: in a great-tit nest, the chick closest to the entrance is most likely to be fed, suggesting that they jockey for position. And in some species, such as the western grebe, older chicks seem to punish their younger siblings if they beg too vigorously. In future, researchers may be more wary of turning their backs on the nest.

Hmmm, what's with the Talon?  ???

getting some "Beauty" sleep

Messin with Orville

"Mums the word"