As many of you will know, this year we entered the third year of our Poole Harbour Osprey translocation project. With our first returning bird (male LS7) from 2017 arriving back this summer we’re already beginning to see the fruits of our labour. However, until recently there was still three years of translocation to carry out. Well, we’re glad to announce that on July 15th this year, the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation arrived here in Poole with eleven big, healthy Osprey chicks for our 2019 project, which were received by our Birds of Poole Harbour Osprey team here in Poole who began the long and dedicated process of raising these youngsters.

After three long weeks and A LOT of fish pepping, we’re thrilled to announce that all eleven fledged successfully this past weekend and have been happily settling into their new surroundings with lots of active flying, calling, playing and generally getting up to mischief. The hard work is by no-means over as it’s now our role to keep a track of these birds as they begin to build in confidence and eventually begin to explore the wider harbour in a few weeks’ time.

It’s possible that when they begin venturing towards the harbour, they may settle on some of the harbour nest platforms such as Middlebere, so please be on the lookout for ring numbers 015 – 025, blue ring on right leg.

This is such exciting news that we thought you’d like to see some footage of two of the class of 2019 feeding on one of the feed platforms just after they’d been released. In fact, it was so exciting that would you believe it, only hours after releasing the first couple of birds, guess who turned up…..yep……CJ7. She has now been with the chicks every day since, and today even tried stealing fish from one of them on one of our feeding nests!

Thanks everyone for all your generous support and kind words over the year. Next spring could be incredibly exciting which makes all this hard work and constant fish smell so worth it.

We’ll post a full blog in due course, but we’re currently trying to keep track of eleven delinquent Osprey chicks, so in the meantime, enjoy the video!