We can see that these are definitely the same birds that nested last year, as the coloured plastic leg rings are clearly visible.

The first bird to arrive, over the Easter weekend, was the male ('White YW' leg ring). Much of his time on the nest was spent ineffectively rearranging 1 stick and getting annoyed by a side branch he couldn't break off. Whilst resting after rushing back from Africa to guard his nest, he spent a lot of time restlessly scanning the skyline for signs of his mate, much as I was doing from our viewing platform.

At the end of last week there were multiple reports of ospreys migrating across North Lancs and Cumbria, and we were delighted that they included last year's female ('Blue 35' leg ring), who was named Splash in a children's competition at Kielder Water.

The camera couldn't see their aerial tussle with a visiting osprey who took a shine to their nest, but it did record one of several mating attempts. They briefly visited another artificial osprey nest platform nearby, leading to considerable nail-biting amongst onlookers, but soon took up residence on the nest with the cameras again.

I'm really delighted by the quality of these high-definition images we have been getting. The credit has to go to our IT manager Rob, whose expertise and patience has got us this far, and to the staff from 2020 Vision, who don't normally have to suffer falling into bogs during hailstorms to install CCTV systems.

I really hope we can keep up the momentum on this, and get live video of Foulshaw Moss ospreys streaming on our website soon. Please consider making a donation to Cumbria Wildlife Trust's Foulshaw Moss osprey appeal to help make this possible.

Thanks
Simon