Today was a historic day as we went and ringed the Poole Harbour Osprey chicks, the first clutch of four that our pair have produced since establishing in 2022. Luckily the settled weather allowed for an early morning climb with the oldest chick reaching 40 days old today and the youngest being 33 days old. This meant today was the ‘sweet spot’ which allowed for a fairly calm affair, before the chicks get too feisty. They seemed a tad tricky to sex this year with the three oldest sitting in the overlap zone of around c1600g. They were ringed 5R0, 5R1 , 5R2 and the youngest we decided to ring ‘out of sequence’ 5H6. Originally we thought we may have had 2 male and 2 female, but having liaised with Tim Mackrill and discussed the weights, there’s an outside chance we could actually have 4 well fed males! We’ll observe their development over the next few weeks, but that would be an incredible result.

Elsewhere the first Spotted Redshank of the autumn was in Middlebere yesterday evening and this evening a ringed Osprey was seen on the Middlebere nest platform, although annoyingly the camera didn’t take any photos! At RSPB Lytchett Fields this morning there was a good run of waders including 6 Green Sandpiper, 3 Little Ringed Plover, 26 Redshank and 2 Greenshank. A Cattle Egret was in Wytch Lake, 2 Spoonbill were in Middlebere.

Osprey chicks in nest during ringing this morning

BoPH Team Member Paul Morton ringing the chicks in the nest this AM – Mark Wright (BoPH Volunteer)