Toby and I are out in the conservatory. The birds were fed along with The Girls, then my coffee, then Toby’s omelette and finally, our morning walk. The sky is heavy weith grey clouds and everything feels damp. It is decidedly autumn. The squirrels and birds are busy caching. A gallon pail of peanuts seems to disappear in the blink of an eye!
This morning Mr Blue Jay was waiting patiently.
Then, when Junior got his first peanut, he seemed not to know what to do with it. Was it because one of Dyson’s kits had arrived?
The images were all taken through the conservatory glass with the new camera. I am pleased!
Canadian author Margaret Atwood loves birds, especially Ravens. She shared this with her late partner. Graeme Gibson.
“Now, Gibson’s legacy is about to help expand humanity’s understanding of birds. On Friday Western University, in London, Ontario, announced that Atwood had donated C$1m (£540,000) to celebrate her late partner’s love of birds.
The gift will create the Graeme Gibson chair in avian biology, with the goal of better understanding the fundamental processes that shape how birds move, adapt and behave in an environment undergoing profound transformation.
You can read the ‘good news’ article in The Guardian here:
I missed the Webinar with Ben Wurst on the osprey decline in the Chesapeake Bay region. I hope it will be archived on YouTube. I will provide the link if that happens.
Osprey starvation is not new to those reading my blog. We have been discussing this for at least three years, but this year appears to be not only the critical breaking point (is it a point of no return?) but also a call for help from various agencies and individuals. Michael Academia and others have been sounding the warning for many years!
This is a huge study. Please look and act when you can.
“(Williamsburg, VA)— The Center for Conservation Biology at William & Mary has compiled the 2026 breeding performance results for osprey populations along the Atlantic Coast of North America. Within the Chesapeake Bay, breeding performance in ospreys has been poor for several years due to extreme food stress during the nesting season. Productivity has declined to critical levels that now threaten the stability of the largest osprey breeding population in the world. The primary objective for compiling osprey monitoring results for the broader Atlantic coast is to visualize breeding performance at scale and address the question “Are ospreys experiencing reproductive deficits in waters beyond the Chesapeake Bay?” The 2026 effort includes monitoring results for 2,886 pairs from 65 study areas across 10 states (Table 1, Figure 1).”
Please read Audubon’s Call to Action and sign the form at the link to help Ospreys. No money required – just a note to the commission, and please share extensively on social media and with friends and family.
Hope has returned to her nest at the Osprey Environment Centre after losing all three chicks due to a lack of fish.
We wait the arrival of the falcons in both Melbourne and Orange.
The wee sea eaglets are doing fine. SE38 isn’t backing down when it comes to food!
Shadow and Kaydee didn’t blink – Toby and The Girls would have hide with Toby howling – but not our new Big Bear couple. SK Hideaways got them: https://youtu.be/4AIX1M9dwGI?
Thank you for being with me. I am hanging in there. We are now 4.5 weeks into Don’s stay in the hospital. He was able to put weight on his feet three days ago and has walked some. He can feed himself on occasion. His communication is somewhat better. A day at a time, a day at a time.
Thank you to The Guardian, SK Hideaways, and everyone who is working hard to save the ospreys. Please do check out the posts and voice your opinion! Now is not the time to sit on our hands – it is time for action. Thank you also to the owners of the streaming cams that allow us to look into the lives of these incredible birds.
What a gorgeous fall day. It was 11 C when Toby and I went for our first walk. The sky was blue and there was a gentle breeze. The leaves were dancing down from the trees at the little park at the end of our street. If we go around 1000, Toby gets to see his friend, 17 month-old, Adelina. She claps her little hands when she sees him coming and he begins to go at a much quicker pace. It delights me!
My news will be short today – sorry. I continue to declutter, clean, and modify parts of the house in anticipation of Don returning home – at some point. Toby and I also spent three hours at the hospital. Prior to his admission, Don was mobile; he could feed and toilet himself – like everyone else. Today, he is, more or less, an invalid. The cause of the extreme change mystifies me.
Very sad news coming out of Syracuse University:
Well, the osprey news is rather thin.
At Hellgate Canyon, Wensi and Clarke were last seen about the same time, on the 6th of September. The latest Iris stayed was the 11th of September. This year, however, she has stayed longer. She was photographed eating a fish on the light stand at the baseball park where Louis and Starr have their nest. I understand this is south of Iris’s nest and could indicate the beginning of her migration.
Lin Lawson posted that image. I find it one of the most striking images of Iris – just her profile, eating a fish.
Well, she was still around on the 17th eating another fish on the light stand!!!!!!!!!!
The 18th will be exactly one week after our Queen has stayed. Each of us noticed Iris looking a little ‘worn out’ after raising Wensi. I am glad she is taking her time, getting fit, and putting some fat on. Female ospreys are known to lose at least 30% of their body weight laying eggs, incubating, and raising their chicks. They have to put that back on, plus some, to be truly ready for their long journeys to their winter homes.
It appears that C22 has finally left Montana and headed south. Charlie was seen enjoying eating his own fish without a screaming young one!
Cowlitz seems to be the only Pacific NW nest with an adult and chick still there.
Please note that this is included in the newsletter: “Public comments are being accepted through October 9, 2026. We strongly encourage everyone who cares about Ospreys, the Chesapeake Bay, and the health of our entire Bay ecosystem to participate. Please see the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Public Comment schedule here. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has provided a link so that you can sign onto their document which will be submitted to ASMFC.” Go to https://cbf.quorum.us/campaign/addendum2/?utm_source=action-alert&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=menhaden&utm_content=microsite
You do not have to live in the region. Please, please go to the document and sign it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More on the issue of Menhaden and the rapid decline of the osprey population.
“At some point, the menhaden debate has to become about more than how many fish we can legally remove.
It has to become about whether we should.
Menhaden are not just another commodity. They are forage. They move energy through the ecosystem, feeding redfish, striped bass, birds, sharks, dolphins, and countless other predators.
A school of menhaden entering an estuary isn’t an empty resource waiting to be extracted. It’s already doing something.
It’s feeding the ecosystem.
That’s what gets lost when we talk only about harvest limits.
And here’s the question I keep coming back to:
If we can develop alternatives to wild-caught forage fish, why wouldn’t we use them?
Algae, alternative feed ingredients, invasive species, and other technologies are already being investigated as substitutes for some of the products traditionally made from wild fish.
So why continue putting additional pressure on a foundational forage species when other options are becoming available?
This isn’t anti-fishing.
It isn’t anti-commercial fishing.
It’s a question of priorities.
In the Chesapeake, managers are even considering significant reductions to the menhaden reduction fishery cap. That alone should tell us this conversation deserves more than a simple argument over whether the coast-wide stock is technically “overfished.”
A coast-wide assessment doesn’t automatically tell us what is happening in every bay, marsh, and estuary.
Growing up around the Gulf Coast teaches you something quickly.
Nothing in the water exists by itself.
Take away enough pieces, and eventually you change the system.
We don’t have to wait until something is broken before deciding it’s worth protecting.
You’re allowed to want abundant marshes.
You’re allowed to want healthy redfish and trout populations.
You’re allowed to want osprey over the Chesapeake and bait moving through Gulf marshes.
And you’re allowed to ask whether turning a foundational forage fish into an industrial product is really the highest and best use of that resource.
Maybe the real question isn’t how much menhaden can we take?
Maybe it’s:
How much should we leave in the water?
Because sometimes the most valuable fish is the one that never reaches the processing plant.”
Do people need fish to survive? No, we do not. Do ospreys rely on fish as their only food? Yes. What about the others, like albatross?? Climate change, global oceans warming, rivers drying up – all of this spells disaster, and it is impacting wildlife that depend on fish. I am too tired tonight, but this is a very serious issue. Humans can do without supplements and give up eating chicken or salmon (Menhaden are used to make feed for chicken and salmon farms as well as supplements). We would not die. Indeed, eating a more plant-based diet benefits us and the planet. As one Michelin-star chef remarked the other day, eating beans is very healthy, a good choice for the planet, and, in times of escalating food costs, a great way to lower food costs!!
Aran has departed from the Friends’ nest in Anglesey.
Geemeff’s Woodland Trust daily summary for Loch Arkaig Thursday 17th September 2026
Another wet and windy day, with night cam switching over shortly after 8pm. The only activity was a Raven perching on Nest One and kronking loudly at others flying nearby
‘R’ sent me a recent article, How to Stop a Murdering Cat, about felines and their devastating impact on songbirds. The number of birds killed by well-fed, or ‘fat cats, ‘ is astonishing. Please spread the word for people to keep their pets inside. We might have 1 billion more birds singing in the trees – or more.
‘J’ sent me some good news articles; I will start a section on my blog tomorrow and include them. You can join in, too. Please do send me amazing stories and their links to share with others.
Thank you, everyone, for being with us today. I hope to post some good news stories later tomorrow, so please send me more than I have so we have a diverse mix. If I do not post my blog tomorrow, they will appear late Saturday. Now take care everyone and get outside and enjoy the autumn nip in the air.
Thank you, as always, to Geemeff and SK Hideaways. Thank you to everyone who posted information on FB – I am so grateful. These days, I don’t always have time to go back and rewind all the videos when I get home from the hospital. To everyone fighting to stop the industrial fishing of Menhaden to save the osprey and an ecosystem- bravo. The people who want this to cease are growing each day. We have a real chance of winning, and winning we must do.
Toby and I have not been home long. We visited with Don’s psychiatrist (what a great doctor) and stopped to give Ann some raincoats for her two dogs, Lucy and Daisy, and Toby’s old stroller. It is too tiny for our big boy – he is long from head to tail and long in the legs and clocks in at 30 lbs. Then we went to the hospital. Ann said that Don had eaten all of his lunch, but Toby and I decided to stop and get him an egg-mayo sandwich and a container of fresh pineapple chunks. Don sucked them up like he was a Dyson vacuum! The nurse was a little put out with me saying he wouldn’t eat his supper, but he only ate 25% of his supper last night. Their lunches are good, but the evening meal is not so much.
Poor Toby needs to go to the groomer.
On the way out, two ladies in wheelchairs spotted Toby in his new stroller. They lit up and wanted to see him. I opened the top so they could pet him – needless to say animals and nature are good therapy.
I don’t like the algorithms that track what I write or search for on the Internet. Or my phone, which tracks everything that I do for someone else (who would care what I do?), but I found a story about what some good tech is doing by a young NZ woman who writes a blog *shit you should care about*. Maybe we can get robots to clear all the plastic from the ocean and find a way to cool it at the same time. German engineers are working!
Autonomous robots are cleaning the seafloor
Luce writes: If we’re gonna be hell-bent on building robots, let them help our oceans! German researchers at the Technical University of Munich built Smart Grapple, a diving robot that uses onboard sensors and cameras to tell trash from marine life on its own, then grips and lifts junk, car seats, tyres, fishing nets, up to 250kg, without a human diver risking their life for it.
I love it.
Dear Aran, formerly Mrs G’s partner then Elen’s at Glaslyn, has a new partner and they raised one chick this year at a private platform of Friends of Osprey in Wales. Kathryn Keir has kept everyone informed, and Aran is still here. Appears Mum and chick have now both departed for their migration. Next year there will be a camera as Aran is sooooo loved and everyone was distraught when Teifi displaced him. But, it worked out! Aran never got along with Z2 Aeron at the Pont Cresor nest which is very close to Glaslyn.
Another place that the lack of Menhaden had a devastating impact:
The trawler fishing must stop! Otherwise, there will be no ospreys in this region. None. Worse than the DDT crisis of the 1970s. That was fixed. Seems no one has the backbone to do the right thing and stop the fishing completely.
News from Tweed Valley:
Our thoughts continue to be with the people living in line of these hurricanes – and, of course, the wildlife.
Iris is still home at Hellgate Canyon! Maybe Clark and Iris will get a chance to fatten up since it appears Wensi has set off for southern locations.
It appears that the latest Iris departed on 11 September 2014. Let’s see what she does this year.
SK Hideaways caught Shadow and Kaydee and the early morning ravens at Big Bear. Don’t you feel like things are getting serious? https://youtu.be/TzJPFak8rnM?
SE38 continues to do well. There were lots of big crops yesterday. 38 is starting off right today.
And the Royal Cam Chick, Awheo has fledged!
Thank you so much for being with us. I hope to have time tomorrow to catch up with the comments! Take care, everyone – and if you have not signed up for the Glaslyn fundraiser being organised by Mary Cheatle, please check it out! (And, yes, I am on the list! – fingers crossed). You can contact Mary via FB Messenger if you want to take part.
Thank you to everyone who posted on FB today with information and messages – I didn’t have the time to check all of the nests. Thank you to those who own the streaming cams that make it possible to watch our bird families, and to SK Hideaways; as always, thank you for your videos.
