It was Laura that saw it first. ‘You should see the bird over there. It swooped down and lifted a fish out of the water’. She and her two fellow students from Abertay University had been rowing around our idyllic anchorage. We were just one days sail from our base in Craobh Haven, and we were due to return there the next day. It was the first chance we had had on our new Sun Odyssey 44i ‘Kea’, and she had to be back for her next charter.
We had been lucky. It was sunny and a fresh wind had given us a cracking sail. ‘It sounds like an Osprey’ I replied, not quite believing myself. I thought ospreys lived inland, and fished in fresh water lochs. I couldn’t wait to find out, and was soon rowing quietly between the islands. ‘No question about it, and there’s a pair’ I whispered excitedly as a second bird soared overhead, ‘and there’s the nest’. I had seen the original osprey nest at Boat of Garten some years before, and this was almost identical, built on the top of a dead tree.
Following our return to Craobh I did a little research; fellow charter operators confirmed that they also knew of osprey nest sites along the Argyll coast, as well as sea eagles, golden eagles and buzzards.
Credits:
– Osprey Image by Gareth Rasberry
