Scotland's Ospreys: 50 years of watching the bird

THAT white, slightly crested head with the piercing yellow eyes glaring through the dark, burglarish stripe; that wickedly hooked beak; the near-vertical plummet into the water, talons extended, to re-emerge with a silver glint of fish… The osprey has become arguably our best-known recovered bird species, an icon of changed fortunes for birds of prey and changed attitudes towards them.

Today marks 50 years since the first members of the public arrived at some decidedly makeshift facilities on the pine-fringed shores of Loch Garten in Strathspey to observe the first pair of ospreys to nest in the UK since 1916.

The somewhat ramshackle caravan which greeted them eventually developed into the RSPB Scotland's Loch Garten Osprey Centre, not only helping to ensure the birds' successful re-establishment, but also pioneering the concept of "eco-tourism" in Scotland. Tomorrow, when Frank Hamilton, the former director of RSPB Scotland, unveils a golden fish emblem at the state-of-the-art visitor centre which now stand on the site, he will be marking a half-century during which the elegant raptor's future in Britain has sometimes looked precarious indeed.

Unlike more recent reintroductions of vanished native raptors such as the red kite and the white-tailed eagle, the osprey (also known as the fishing hawk) returned of its own accord, if tentatively, after a hiatus of four decades, the bird having succumbed to the merciless persecution of "vermin" by Victorian estate-owners and their keepers and the depredations of egg-hunters. The first recorded pair to nest in Britain since 1916 arrived at the loch in 1954, settling in Scotland's largest remaining expanse of natural pinewood. Thanks to unrelenting egg-theft, however, it was 1959 before any chicks hatched; the RSPB finally mounted a round-the-clock watch and erected barbed wire around the nest tree to prevent further threats to the breeding pair.

Richard Thaxton, RSPB Scotland's site manager at Loch Garten, says: "Fifty years ago the country was stirred by the fact that these amazing birds had finally returned after extinction at the hands of man. Overall, ospreys are now a conservation success story for Scotland."

Since 1959, the Loch Garten site has seen 141 eggs laid and 86 chicks fledged, with their descendents now returning to Scotland to nest themselves. The current pair of ospreys at the site, the regular female EJ and her new mate, Odin, are raising three chicks.

The Scottish osprey population last year passed the 200 pair mark for the first time in several centuries, but the journey has been a rocky one. Young birds frequently die during their hazardous migration between Britain and west Africa, while just last week egg thieves struck at another osprey nest in Strathspey.

Ornithologist Roy Dennis MBE, author of A Life With Ospreys who has been instrumental in the reintroduction to Scotland of other raptors such as the red kite and the white-tailed eagle, credits George Waterston, then director of the RSPB in Scotland, with sparking his enthusiasm for ospreys back in the mid-1950s. Dennis wasn't at Loch Garten in 1959, but instead was working at the remote Fair Isle bird observatory when Waterston visited and told him what was happening in Strathspey.

"It was George who set the whole thing up, and he came to Fair Isle and was so enthusiastic about the ospreys that the following year I went to Loch Garten as warden."

Dennis, now 69 and living in Forres, Morayshire, where he studies a population of ospreys which feed on both fresh and salt water fish, recalls those first years at Loch Garten as precarious. "We had just the one pair and there were real worries about the eggs being stolen.

"It was a very determined job and there were fantastic volunteers who came to help. So it was really great in 1963 when we got a second pair, because that was also the year that a gale blew the nest down."

The ospreys have become perhaps our archetypal charismatic recovering bird species, he agrees. "The two important things with the osprey were that it became a symbol of bird conservation, but the other thing was that George Waterston had the great idea of showing these very rare birds to people. Before that, if you found a rare bird's nest, you kept it a secret."

Exposing the precious nest to the full glare of publicity was, he agrees, a gamble. "Many people thought he was wrong, but he was right, and the great thing was that … you hear about eco-tourism so much nowadays, but that must have been one of the first eco-tourism things in Scotland. I think the Loch Garten story was instrumental in changing people's attitudes towards the conservation of birds. It was a marvellous project right from the start."

Back in the 1950s, Dennis says, interest in ospreys tended to be confined to the bird-watching cognoscenti – "Many people wouldn't have known whether it was an osprey or an ostrich" – but as increasing numbers beat a path to the makeshift observation facilities, there were times when they had problems coping.

He recalls: "They'd arrive in charabancs and all sorts of things, and especially on Saturdays and Sundays we had big crowds. The biggest problem in the early days was that they all parked along the roadway as there were no car parks. At times it was a bit of a scrum, but there were always fantastic locals who came and helped at weekends."

Frank Hamilton, director of RSPB Scotland for 15 years until his retirement in 1994, also remembers the makeshift conditions at the site. He'd just joined the RSPB in 1958, and arrived at the Loch Garten site the very night that the nest was stolen. The following year, however, the eggs hatched successfully and Hamilton spent two months there with his new wife, who found herself cooking for RSPB team on minimal facilities. "It was a really rickety caravan," he recalls, "with two burners to cook for sometimes as many as ten people camping there."

When the chicks eventually hatched in early June and egg-collectors no longer posed a threat, the RSPB council backed Waterston's suggestion that the site be made public. "Bird watching was a very minor interest then, but because the nest theft had been so widely covered the previous year, The Scotsman and other papers really played it up and I would imagine 14,000 people came up that first summer. From 1960 onwards, we had to get ourselves really well organised."

He says when he unveils that symbolic golden fish at Loch Garten tomorrow: "I'll be thinking about how much pleasure these birds have given to people over the years. And the osprey is one of the few birds in Britain whose young stay around the nest in July and August, when children are off school, so they can get involved."

As well as becoming emblems of bird conservation, he adds, the Loch Garten ospreys may be the most studied birds in the world, with complete records of their progress for every year of the past half century.

The birds have become unknowing media celebrities, with the first CCTV camera installed near their nest in 1989, allowing the public to watch them closely without disruption. These days, live webcam footage from the nest can be viewed on the RSPB Scotland website, and technology continues to play a part in their monitoring, with Loch Garten chicks last year fitted with solar-powered satellite tags to track their arduous journeys to and from Africa – in the event, only one of these chicks made it to Africa last winter and seems to have perished since.

Found all over the world, the osprey is the only raptor which plunges fully into water to seize its prey, and there are records of them drowning, either through refusing to let go of more powerful fish or their claws becoming entrapped in the fish's body.

Globally, too, this charismatic bird has established itself in folklore. In west Africa, where the British ospreys over-winter, people regard the bones of a fish caught by an osprey as a talisman for fishermen. Oft recounted in osprey lore is the missionary's tale of a Bolivian Indian inserting the bone of an osprey under the skin of his arm, in the hope of absorbing its hunting prowess.

And in Scotland, according to Robin Hull's Scottish Birds: Culture and Tradition, as late as the 16th century, there were those who believed that just one of the osprey's feet was armed with talons for fishing, while the other was purely for swimming. Not as far off the mark as one might think, observes Dennis – "Because sometimes, when they hit the water and catch a fish that's too big, you'll see them 'row' ashore."