Wow, what an exciting week it has been for us all at Lyndon!

Despite the weather being miserable and unrecognisable for May, last Saturday (8^th May) all eyes were focused on one of the eggs, because eventually, after 39 days of incubation, there were signs the first chick was about to hatch. When Maya and 33(11) swapped over incubation duties that morning an egg had a visible crack in it, and if you look closely in the clip below, you can see movement from the chick inside.

Every time Maya got up and took a break from incubating, or rolled the eggs, we were excited to see how much progress the hatching chick had made. It was around 15:00 that afternoon that big progress was made and 20 minutes later, at 15:18, the chick fully hatched.

It was fascinating to watch Maya juggle looking after the newly hatched chick as well as the two eggs, which of course still had a few days of incubation left, but she is such an experienced bird and took that in her stride.

We didn’t have to wait much longer for the second chick to hatch, which hatched two days later, on Monday (10^th) evening at 19:52. Our wonderful volunteers are back down monitoring the nest from the Waderscrape Hide and it was them who witnessed the hatching first hand! Just one egg to go…

Unfortunately, it became apparent, after a fish damaged the shell, on Friday afternoon the final egg was addled, meaning it wasn’t viable and wouldn’t have hatched. We don’t know for certain why this is, but it could have been caused by exposure to cold weather, which we did have a lot of when the first two eggs in particular were laid. It is a shame, however having two strong, healthy chicks is the main thing and still brilliant!

Since the chicks have hatched 33(11) has been bringing on average two fish back a day, so those two chicks will soon grow and we are all very much looking forward to all the Osprey action over the coming weeks!