Monty comes up trumps

The parent ospreys arrived at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust’s Cors Dyfi Reserve near Machynlleth in April and produced three eggs. The first egg hatched on Sunday afternoon followed by the second on Monday morning and a third Tuesday.

 

Mywelshpool has been regularly contacted by local wildlife lovers for information and recruited Dave and Jayne Hollingworth from the five-star Morben Isaf Holiday Home and Touring Park next door to keep an eye on the nest for us.

 

Last night they broke the wonderful news that we had been waiting for and Jayne was at the project’s visitor centre to see the first chick hatch at 3.35pm on Sunday.

 

“I went over just in time to see a ball of fluff come out of one of the three eggs,” she said. “Some people were in tears, possibly through a mixture of joy and relief. Everybody at the project was so emotional and it was lovely to be there to see the first chick hatch.”

 

Morben Isaf Holiday Home and Touring Park has provided a caravan holiday home for volunteers from the Dyfi Osprey Project to use for the past three years.

 

Now the site could be a magnet for thousands of bird lovers as it is the first recorded osprey to be born locally for 400 years. And it will be further boosted by the BBC’s Springwatch team, currently located at the nearby RSPB reserve at Ynys Hir, who filmed the ospreys on Monday.

 

“We are expecting a very busy weekend after the ospreys have appeared on Springwatch!” added Jayne.

  

Anne Lloyd-Jones, chairman of Mid Wales Tourism, an independent company representing more than 500 tourism and hospitality businesses, said the new arrivals were “fantastic” news for tourism in the region.

 

“Hopefully, these osprey chicks will attract a lot of visitors to the area over the coming weeks,” she added. “It’s really amazing how many people come every year to see the ospreys.”

 

Elated Dyfi Osprey Project manager Emyr Evans said: “This is a wondrous event for us and for the ospreys. It was in 1604 that ospreys were last recorded breeding on the Dyfi and now we are witnessing history in the making. The osprey is Wales’ rarest bird of prey and today we are delighted to be able to say that Wales has two breeding pairs.

 

Mr Evans believes the father of the chicks, who has been named ‘Monty’, may himself have been born near Welshpool in 2004. A single chick hatched at the secret nest location but the parents failed to return the following year.