Pembrokeshire Osprey Project
Abi Hart writes about the quest to bring ospreys back to breed on the Cleddau
“I think the plan was hatched at parkrun one Saturday morning. Kevin Phelps, whose son is an ornithologist and who is a keen birder himself, was thinking about making the Cleddau estuary more osprey-friendly – so how about we try to put up some nesting platforms?
We knew juvenile birds have been seen “summering” on the river and adult birds stop to feed here during the spring and autumn migrations. Could we persuade one of these youngsters to stay put and breed?
On a freezing day in January 2023, we set out in a RIB to survey the best possible sites (ideally where we knew the landowners) from the water. The advice from the conservation charity the Roy Dennis Foundation, was to look for open sites where a platform on a rise would be easily visible for the birds flying over the water.
Having approached the landowners to get the go ahead in principle we then had to get some funding and planning permission.
We called ourselves the “Pembrokeshire Osprey Project”, won a £5,000 grant from the Countryside Alliance Foundation and succeeded in securing permission for five sites for poles on privately-owned locations in the upper reaches of the Cleddau.
Between the team we completed the five separate planning applications required by the National Park. We constructed the platforms and the two-foot high twig nests that were permanently fixed to them.
We got a huge boost from National Grid who provided us with 3 telegraph poles (the other two platforms have been put on 15-metre Scots Pine trunks) and, more importantly, the man and machine power to erect them.The platforms (which were built to a blueprint provided by The Roy Dennis Foundation) needed to weathered in over the winter before the ospreys returned in the spring of 2024.
We got them up at the end of summer 2023 and in early spring 2024 we returned with a cherry picker (thanks once again to the National Grid) to fill the twig nests up with ton bags of moss and leaf litter that we had collected. Talk about feather-bedding!
We got an almost immediate hit in April which was incredibly exciting. One of the nests had a trailcam fitted, and we managed to get shots of a juvenile male tagged with a “KC1” ring using the nest site.He was born on the Glaslyn nest in North Wales in 2019. After spending a few weeks building up the nest (using seaweed at times) he took a day trip to Brecon (where his tag was identified once again) and returned to the Cleddau with a female!
The pair were seen on the nest for a couple of weeks but at the end of May things went quiet. There have been various sightings through the summer of osprey fishing but sadly no more regular use of “our” nests. However, we are hopeful that KC1 is now familiar with the Cleddau and will return next spring, a little more mature and ready for his beautiful forever home in Pembrokeshire.”
Find us on Facebook and Instagram @pembs_osprey_project
Photos courtesy of @davewe1ton
Some additional Osprey Info
Ospreys, also known as river hawks, are formidable apex predators that hunt shallow swimming fish by divebombing the water and plunging their razor-sharp talons into the fishes’ backs. One of Britain’s rarest birds of prey, ospreys are an iconic species and a rewilding success story, like beavers and white-tailed eagles.
Kevin’s son Toby Phelps, an ornithologist, explained:
“Ospreys have a stronghold in Scotland and are spreading south as their numbers grow. I think it is only a matter of time before ospreys recolonise the Cleddau – the habitat is ideal and there’s loads of food for them. The only thing it lacks are suitable nesting locations. Hopefully the platforms have removed that final barrier and will accelerate their recolonising of South Wales.”
These nests, or eyries, are used by osprey pairs for life. They will raise up to 50 chicks, always with the same partner. On chances of success, Toby Phelps said:
“I’m quietly optimistic. I think a young bird might make the Cleddau its home next summer and scope out the platform. Then in the spring of 2025/26, when it’s old enough to breed, it’ll hopefully use one of the platforms to raise its chicks.”
Ospreys bred in Ireland in 2024 for the first time in 200 years at a confidential location in County Fermanagh. Once common in Britian, ospreys were hunted to extinction in 1916 by Victorian egg collectors. Occasional birds were spotted migrating from their winter homes in West Africa to summer breeding grounds in Scandinavia. But it wasn’t until 1954 that ospreys bred again in Britain, on Scotland’s Loch Garten, Aviemore. Numbers recovered slowly across Scotland through natural recolonisation and by 1991 there were 71 breeding pairs.
In 1996 a project to reintroduce ospreys to England’s Rutland Water was so successful that two pairs moved to Wales, one near Welshpool in Montgomeryshire and the other near Porthmadog in North Wales. There are now 300 breeding pairs in the UK with many aided by nesting platforms like the type built by the Pembrokeshire Osprey Project.