Five weeks have now passed since the day Aran returned to the Glaslyn nest with his injured wing. Although the process of Aran’s recovery may have appeared quite slow at times, we have seen continual improvement as time has gone by. We have been consulting regularly with Dr Tim Mackrill throughout this time and he has shown images and video of Aran to Birds of Prey vet, John Chitty, who works with Tim on the White-tailed Eagle project. John believes that Aran has sustained a carpal injury. Obviously, his main concern is for migration, but John says that time is in his favour and that he is doing his own physio by flying and catching fish within his capabilities. Aran should hopefully make a full recovery.
We first saw Aran with a fish he had caught himself on 8th June. We next saw him with one on 17th June and since then, he has caught a further three fish that we know of. There may of course have been others that we have not seen. We have also seen a downturn in the number of provided fish that have been taken by Aran during this period, the decrease coincided with the increased number of fish taken by crows. We know that Mrs G is catching her own fish, although she is always happy to take a provided fish if one is available. Now that Aran is starting to recover, we will only provide supplementary fish if we feel he is not able to sufficiently feed himself. We will know he is almost fully recovered when he provides a fish to Mrs G.
It has undoubtedly been a difficult time for the Glaslyn pair with the injury to Aran and the subsequent loss of their three chicks. Generally, when a nesting attempt fails, the male will provide for the female and other bonding behaviours continue, such as bringing sticks to the nest and occasionally mating attempts are observed. We know that these behaviours were observed when the Glaslyn nest last failed, back in 2004. It has probably been a confusing time for Mrs G and over the past couple of weeks we were seeing the pair make very few visits to the nest. We had observed Mrs G carrying sticks to a tree at the rear of the nest, not far from the tree by the river where we often see Aran perched. We also saw both Glaslyn birds picking up nesting material, but none of these items were brought to the Glaslyn nest.
Several Ospreys were seen intruding at the nest, on Sunday 20th June, Z1/Tegid and Z2/Aeron chased KS8 over to the nest whilst neither Glaslyn bird was present to defend their territory. On Tuesday morning, KS6/Dinas and KS8 were together briefly on the Glaslyn nest. During the afternoon we saw Mrs G head over the Visitor Centre towards the Glaslyn nest and she landed in the tree by the river. Aran must have also been nearby, because shortly afterwards he arrived to defend the nest, just as a total of four intruding Ospreys circled over it! We know one of these birds was KS8 yet again, as she landed on the nest with Aran before being seen off by Mrs G. One of the intruders was a male with a blue ring on the right leg, but we were unable to identify him. We know that Z2 was missing from the Pont Croesor nest at the time, so it could have been him or KS6. Mrs G was seen to flap at Aran as though he was an intruder, but we think it was a case of either mistaken identity or redirected behaviour, as there was another Osprey immediately above Aran as he landed that was not picked up on the 4K camera. The mass intrusion seems to have helped to reinforce the bond between Mrs G and Aran as they have spent more time on the nest since then. They clearly are not ready to hand their prime Osprey real estate over to other Ospreys, just yet.
Aran has brought several sticks to the nest since the intrusion, including some large ones that further prove his capabilities are improving with time. He even came to the perch and spent the night there in the early hours of Friday 25th. He has not delivered a fish to Mrs G as yet, but hopefully this is only a question of time as his wing continues to improve and they re-establish their bond to their nest and one another.