A pair of stingrays made their first breeding attempt in southern England in almost 200 years.
Conservationists are pleased that a pair of birds in the port of Poole, Dorset, have produced an egg that they keep in a nest in a secret place. Thanks to the nesting cameras, viewers can watch the female osprey incubate her egg live.
Live webcam from the osprey nesting platform in the port of Poole.
Birds of prey were once common in Western Europe, but due to human persecution as well as habitat loss, they became extinct locally in the early 1800s. Their nests have historically been looted for their eggs, and birds have been shot for taxidermy. Today, they still shoot regularly for sports in southern Europe.
Since 2017, experts from the Roy Dennis Foundation and Birds of Poole Harbor have been working to reintroduce them to the South of England by relocating adult birds from Scotland. Rutland Water in the Midlands has a breeding population following a relocation program that began in 1996, and after decades of conservation efforts, there are now hundreds of stingrays in Scotland.
Paul Morton of Birds of Poole Harbor said: “To know that there is now an osprey egg in a nest in the port of Poole is just amazing. This is the culmination of seven years of hard work. Projects like this will always take time, but it’s such a great feeling to know that the birds have reached this important stage and to see CJ7 incubate its first egg is stunning.
“They both have a lot to learn as new parents, and success in breeding is certainly not guaranteed. However, everything we see at the moment looks really positive and we hope to start seeing them feeding their newly hatched babies by the end of May.
We hope that the couple will produce two more eggs next week and then begin a 35-40 day incubation period with the possibility of hatching chickens from the osprey until the end of May.
The port of Poole was chosen for the project because there is an abundance of fish for the birds to feed on. It is known that scorpions from other parts of the United Kingdom pass through the port on their way to and from Europe along their migration route and stop hunting mullet and flounder in the large shallow canals and bays of the port.
The couple flew to West Africa last fall and the Birds of Poole Harbor team waited seven months to see if they would return. The migration of birds to Africa is fraught with dangers, including adverse weather conditions and illegal hunting. They both arrived earlier this month and are set to breed.
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