The Boat of Garten Osprey Centre near Aviemore is the Scottish Spring and Summer home to EJ and Odin, a pair of ospreys who fly in from Africa every April to the same nest. They lay eggs and raise their chicks before flying back to Africa in late August as a family. The Osprey Centre is a good visit and is just an easy one hour drive from Loch Ness.At the Centre you can watch the ospreys on their nest high up a nearby tree via the webcam in great close up with the sound of the wind in the trees. EJ, the female osprey, has recently laid several eggs and two of them have now hatched and are being fed with fish by Odin, who is extremely good at fishing in nearby Loch Garten. For such large birds with large feet and talons they are so very careful around their young.
Here the garden is suddenly teeming with bird life. The male Great Spotted Woodpeckers are feeding on everything and then take beak fulls of food back to the females waiting in nests in nearby tree trunks.
At Loch Ness the swallows are now rapidly skimming over the surface of the water to catch the hovering insects. They keep zooming into the garage if it is open so we have to keep an eye on them and make sure they come out as we do not want them nesting inside.Saw these hungry dunnock chicks in the garden waiting to be fed as well as the robin giving himself a 'spring clean' in the bath before returning to the nest.
New life is starting all over again and is marvellous to watch.
