Several ospreys still fishing down at Findhorn Bay over the last few days. On Friday we had a big flood and the River Findhorn washed down lots of trees, which had toppled over into the rivers during the heavy snows of February, and spread them out over Findhorn Bay, so now the ospreys have even more perching places out on the mud flats. When you see these trees come down after a flood and embed themselves in the estuary, their roots sticking up, it’s easy to understand how ospreys could nest in such trees in the estuaries of big rivers, where there are no surrounding forests. Here, where I’m trying to catch an osprey for satellite tagging, it’s annoying to me that they have so many extra perches and my chances of success are much less.

On Friday, I also went to Aviemore to collect a very tired osprey which had got caught in a net – a sub-adult which was very weak and could have easily died. I force-fed him for the first two days with strips of rainbow trout from the Rothiemurchus fishery, but it was great yesterday to see him eating his own fish and today he tore up a whole trout for himself. I’m hoping he can fly free by the end of the week. And talking of Rothiemurchus, the very late young male osprey which I satellite tagged in August and named Rothiemurchus was off on migration today, after an extended tour of north-east Scotland yesterday. So tonight he’s roosting beside a small lake just north of Morpeth. Finally, Stan Laybourne telephoned me this evening to say thatMorven was eating a fish this afternoon and still in Caithness. The three males are all still here and all now have their webpages up-to-date ready for the migrations to start.

Late news – first data just in for Red 8T – he left after 9am and by this evening was near Kielder Water in Northumberland – 160 miles for the first day – he’s on his way.