4:45pm BST

Mating - (Busy Young Male - In the half hour or so that I have been watching he has mated 3 times)



About 10 minutes after this mating he brought her a gift ( )


She took her gift and left him doing nest guard duty

I have great news for friends of this pair - the Scottish Wildlife Trust will allow us to post s'caps from the cam as long as we note that they are copyrighted and provide a link to their site.

Laurad, one of my co-admins on the Maine Windows-on-Wildlife forum contacted them to ask permission for pictures to be posted there, and got the following response:

Many thanks for your e-mail on Thursday - I hope you had a relaxing Easter break. To answer your question about using webcam screen captures on www.windowonwildlife.com, we would be happy for you to do this.

All we request is that you include "copyright Scottish Wildlife Trust" in your post and a link to the Lowes webcam itself (http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/things-to-do/wildlife-webcams/loch-of-lowes/). This will help ensure that people can find the webcam easily should they be reading your blog post.

I asked for clarification, i.e., if it was sufficient to have the links in the first post only and this was their reply.

To answer your question, I'd be grateful if you could include a link + copyright with each image, as we're keen to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find the webcam from external blogs/forums. I hope that makes sense! Here's hoping for osprey chicks in the very near future

She then asked if other forums could also post the pictures under the same conditions, and they said that would be fine as long as the same conditions were met.

So a big thanks to the Scottish Wildlife Trust - and to laurad for checking with them, and going the extra mile and clarifying that other forums could also post s'caps.

Looking at a couple of ways of complying with their request...

images ©Scottish Wildlife Trust
http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/thi ... -of-lowes/

note - on a PC you can make a copyright symbol by holding down the ALT key and typing 0169 on the number keypad

©Scottish Wildlife Trust - click to view the cam

Added -
I'm noticing that I can't see the entire URL unless I click the box for "Do not parse URLs" at the bottom of the posting window (just above the Submit button) - which may make it harder for people to copy the link from someone else's post.

Trying a code box:

Copying the contents of the code box above and pasting it into a post gives this:
©Scottish Wildlife Trust - click to view the cam

images ©Scottish Wildlife Trust
http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/thi ... -of-lowes/

Quote from the Scottish Wildlife Trust Blog


Note 10:40pm British Summer Time = 2:40pm Pacific Daylight time

Exciting News
Posted on April 12, 2012 by rangeremma

The moment we have all been waiting for: the first egg of the 2012 season has been laid by our resident female Osprey tonight.

At around 10.20pm our volunteers noticed her settling in the nest centre and at around 10.30pm she begin a strange fidgeting which is a reliable indicator of egg laying in progress: lots of tail lifting and straining etc.

At around 10.40pm her behaviour changed and she began to look beneath her and perform he usual egg rolling ‘tucking’ gesture with her beak- giving us our first firm clue that the egg really had arrived. She seemed to be trying to position the egg in the best possible spot under her breast before settling happily down to rest around 11pm. Since then she has been resting comfortably and sleeping- well earnt!

It has been rather difficult to see into the nest cup- the deep scrape in the lining of moss etc the birds have made to nestle eggs in. However, we believe we caught a glimpse of the egg, and are very confident from her behavior that it has arrived safely! Rest assured that at first light we will zoom in with the movable camera for a better view.

Now we have to hope a) the egg is fertile, b) it is joined by others c) the new male is prompted to be a better dad by their arrival!

EGG UPDATE

There does not appear to be an egg after all.

What we do know for certain is that last night our resident female displayed all the text-book signs of egg laying, going through a range of behaviours you only see in an egg laying bird. Watching this footage on playback today with many different experienced staff and volunteers, everyone agrees that she did in fact appear to have laid at around 10.40pm. She incubated for the rest of the hours of darkness, giving every indication of being comfortably settled on an egg. There are two possible explanations that we can think of for this scenario, both highly unusual:

There is a possibility that our osprey may have laid a ‘phantom egg’, (a bit like a phantom pregnancy in mammals), going through all the behavioural motions as her hormones rage, but not actually producing anything. I have never seen this behaviour in an osprey before, but it is presumably possible- perhaps a fascinating glimpse of new osprey behaviour for us to study.

If in fact our female did indeed lay an egg last night, the other possibility is that she has given up incubating it already as there was a problem with it: perhaps it was not normal, or was damaged in some way early this morning. Her instinctive response would be not to bother continuing to incubate it if it was broken etc and to bury it in the nest.

Saturday April 14

At 7:16pm Lady delivered an egg - Haven't seen the egg yet - deep nest bowl. The @#$@#% site is shutting off about every 2 - 3 minutes. Extremely difficult to capture images. I had 3 recorders going at the same time so that I would be sure to catch it. She had been acting like she was ready to lay for the past couple of hours - but there was an interruption with "nest defending" I have been trying to watch closely. The short time out makes it irritating to say the least. Lessens one's desire to watch the site.


Three photos of the actual laying sequence below are © property of Scottish Wildlife Trust
http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/thi ... -of-lowes/
The Start of the Delivery


Delivered


Turning to check and cover egg

Quote by: BET

Saturday April 14

At 7:16pm Lady delivered an egg - Haven't seen the egg yet - deep nest bowl. The @#$@#% site is shutting off about every 2 - 3 minutes. Extremely difficult to capture images. I had 3 recorders going at the same time so that I would be sure to catch it. She had been acting like she was ready to lay for the past couple of hours - but there was an interruption with "nest defending" I have been trying to watch closely. The short time out makes it irritating to say the least. Lessens one's desire to watch the site.


Three photos of the actual laying sequence below are © property of Scottish Wildlife Trust
http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/thi ... -of-lowes/
The Start of the Delivery


Delivered


Turning to check and cover egg

BET, I agree, cams that shut down as this does are very hard to follow. The good thing is they update all nesting.. I follow/record cams that have no or little site support, they need to be documented.

8:15pm

Lady is " rolling the egg" but still can't see it