Mendip Osprey Project - Blagdon Lake Birds

Project logo © Robin Prytherch, 2013

Robin’s Big Idea

The late Robin Prytherch, and fellow bird ringer Alan Ashman of the Chew Valley Ringing Station, put up a nest pole at the back of Herriott’s Mill Pool by Chew Valley Lake on 21st March 2005. With an increasing number of Ospreys being seen at the Bristol reservoirs during migration, as the Scottish population expansion gathered pace, local raptor expert Robin decided to try and attract Ospreys looking for new territories to settle at the lake. It was an ambitious idea that was so typical of the man. As it turned out, it’s position in the landscape wasn’t quite right, although on the face of it, it looked perfect from the A368. We know today that Ospreys breeding in the UK, while preferring a nest site with good all round visibilty, ideally require an area of at least four hundred metres from the eyrie with little, or no, human intrusion during the breeding season. Unfortunately, a public footpath running close behind the pool within a few metres of the site chosen by Robin (referred to as Site A) meant it was not really suitable in the long-term, although Alan told me he photographed an Osprey on the platform during those early years.

Ospreys Everywhere

During the Spring of 2013, a sudden cold spell at Easter resulted in a remarkable passage of Ospreys Pandion haliaetus at Blagdon and Chew Valley Lakes. The weather front across the Midlands stopped the northward migrating Ospreys in their tracks.

Weather map for 24th March 2013 © Met Office, 2013

One of those visitors was a male that got caught under protective netting in the Pumping Station grounds where trout are brought on for stocking into the lakes. He not only got in there once but three times during his stop-over!

Osprey, White YA, Pumping Station, Blagdon Lake © Ray Bradley, 2013

Local bird ringer, Dave Nevitt, came to the rescue © Chris Teague, 2013

Released again © Rob Owen, 2013

Luckily, Joanna Dailey, an Osprey worker based at Kielder Water in Northumberland, thought she recognised White YA as one of the birds that bred there in 2012 from the pattern of his underwing (they had been unable to read his ring).

Osprey, White YA, Green Lawn, Blagdon Lake © Allan Chard, 2013

Shortly after his stay at Blagdon from 23rd March to 3rd April, he was spotted back at Kielder Water on 7th April and I received an email from an excited Joanna “White YA landed at 2.18pm! He had a wander round his nest, a bit of a shake, said hello to the female who has been around a couple of days and then went off. Looking for nets no doubt!” She was able to recognise him thanks to their project team having installed cameras at the nest sites during the previous winter. See the Kielder Osprey Blog written by Joanna about their project, which has gone from strength to strength, with White YA nesting successfully again in 2016.

The Osprey workers in Britain are apparently well connected, and it wasn’t long before Emyr Evans made contact to tell me that he had ringed White YA(07) at Glaslyn in North-west Wales and sent me the following pictures of the event. See the Glaslyn Wildlife website for history of their project, also encapsulated beautifully in Emyr’s book Ospreys In Wales, a great read and full of fantastic pictures.

Osprey, white YA, ringed as a nestling on 19th June at Glaslyn, North Wales © Emyr Evans, 2007

So, we had discovered quite a lot about one of our visitors during that amazing spell, that saw passers-by and birders alike spread out along the dam for several days getting outstanding views of Ospreys in the grounds of the Pumping Station and flying over the dam.

During the passage period, I was in contact with raptor expert Roy Dennis of the Highland Foundation for Wildlife, to trace the histories of several ringed birds that we had spotted and, on 31st July 2014, Roy came to visit me on his way out to Spain where he was working on another Osprey introduction project. We had a good look around Blagdon, Chew and Litton Reservoirs, at the end of which he suggested I ought to approach Bristol Water and speak to local land owners with a view to getting some nest poles put up locally to try and attract Ospreys to breed hereabouts.

The Mendip Osprey Project Is Born

On 10th February 2015 I invited a working group of interested parties to a feasibility meeting at the Pumping Station, Blagdon. Representatives from Bristol Water, Avon Wildlife Trust, The Hawk & Owl Trust, Bristol Ornithological Club, Chew Valley Ringing Station, and Wessex Ecological Consultancy all came and agreed we ought to pursue the idea of trying to attract Ospreys to breed around the Bristol reservoirs.

Reading Emyr’s book, it became clear that the male Glaslyn bird, Ochre 11(98), was the father of White YA(07) and was from the Rutland Osprey Project translocation of 1998, having originally hatched on Speyside in Scotland. So, knowing Rutland Water well from my fishing days and subsequent visits to the Bird Fair, I contacted Tim Mackrill to arrange a visit to find out more about their project. On the face of it, it seemed that the landscape around Rutland Water was more like ours than upland breeding areas elsewhere in Britain.

On the 27th July 2015 Robin Prytherch and I visited Rutland and spent the day with Tim Mackrill and John Wright fact finding for our own project. We both bought (signed) copies of their book……….. We learned so much, and on the long drive back to Bristol agreed our perceptions about lowland breeding Ospreys had been fundamentally wrong. The locations we had considered as potential nest sites needed a serious rethink.