Osprey, Leighton Moss

We were sitting in the tea room at Leighton Moss at about 12:15 enjoying a well earned cuppa after a morning walking the fells in Bowland, when I glanced up at the open skylight above us. All I could see was a letter box sized piece of the sky, but incredibly in that very sky, a large raptor was circling. We both agreed that it had to be an Osprey, and I dashed downstairs with my bins and out of the building. No sign of the raptor. I returned to the our table and said, "If an Osprey comes on the pager for Leighton Moss today, that's my bird!". Forty Five minutes later we were on our way to a well known butterfly site near Leighton Moss, when the pager went off - Osprey at Leighton Moss, 12 - 12:30! We had seen, identified and ticked Osprey from inside the tea room at Leighton Moss!

Four hours later we returned to the reserve. We headed down towards the Grizedale hide, when suddenly the gulls went up, and there, overhead was the Osprey. This time it was very close, and we had a much longer view. In total we must have watched it for about 15 minutes before it finally flew towards the Public hide, dived into the water, emerged with a fish and headed east.

The best views we had were from outside the Grizdale hide, where we watched in amazement as it was mobbed by perhaps 100 gulls, 3 Marsh Harriers, a few Lapwings and best of all, about 300 Black-tailed Godwits which flew at it in an incredible display of synchronised flying, to make the Red Arrows envious!