I suffer from a chronic disease - I've had it for many years. Its worse in the spring; March and April are particularly bad. Its called 'Ospreytitis'.
Its the tendency to make ospreys out of anything bigger than a pigeon. Over the years I've turned crows, gulls, kites, buzzards - you name it - all into ospreys. Imagine then the excitement this afternoon as various people were contacting me with an osprey sighting on a dead tree near Derwenlas viewable from the road. I hurried down there, camera in hand, and as I travelled past the tree there she was......
A cormorant! It had me again - just for about 5 seconds, travelling at 50mph, Ospreytitis had struck again. It was perching on a dead tree just like ospreys do.
This time though there's a twist. A few hours after the initial osprey sighting by a reputable birder, the Glaslyn osprey female returned to her nest near Porthmadog. Her nest is only an hour or so away as the osprey flies. Was it the same bird? Well, there are extremely few ospreys in the country at the moment, it is still very early - I would hazard a guess that this bird that was spotted this morning probably was the Glaslyn female taking everything into consideration.
Saw my first warbler of the year at Cors Dyfi today too. It was singing and I'm pretty sure it was a Garden warbler although the single image I got far away in the gloom is no-where near good enough to put on the blog!
Please let me know if you see an osprey won't you, I think it's going to be a good year in Wales this year. Beware of the wrath of Ospreytitis however.
Emyr - you sure they've not been talking about you in Africa and decided to come back in drag?? Everything crossed for the return!
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