The Glaslyn Osprey Project is located in the Glaslyn Valley at Pont Croesor near

Porthmadog Porthmadog (; ), originally Portmadoc until 1974 and locally as "Port", is a Welsh coastal town and community in the Eifionydd area of Gwynedd and the historic county of Caernarfonshire. It lies east of Criccieth, south-west of Blaenau Ffest ...

Gwynedd Gwynedd (; ) is a county and preserved county (latter with differing boundaries; includes the Isle of Anglesey) in the north-west of Wales. It shares borders with Powys, Conwy County Borough, Denbighshire, Anglesey over the Menai Strait, and C ...

, north-west

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. The project has supported

osprey The osprey (''Pandion haliaetus''), , also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor reaching more than in length and across the wings. It is brown o ...

s since 2004 when they came to the

Snowdonia National Park Snowdonia or Eryri (), is a mountainous region in northwestern Wales and a national park of in area. It was the first to be designated of the three national parks in Wales, in 1951. Name and extent It was a commonly held belief that the nam ...

to breed after being absent from Wales for decades. The ospreys spend every winter in

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...

and travel thousands of miles to return to Glaslyn every year to breed and raise their chicks. The project was initially run by RSPB Cymru. The ''RSPB Date with Nature'' site at Pont Croesor aimed to introduce people to the

wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...

in the area, inform the public on conservation projects done by the RSPB and ensure 24-hour protection of the eggs in the nest. In 2012 the charity announced that it was looking to withdraw in order to prioritise other challenges facing Welsh wildlife. In September 2013, the Project was handed over to a

Community Interest Company A community interest company (CIC, colloquially pronounced "kick") is a type of company introduced by the United Kingdom government in 2005 under the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004, designed for social ente ...

called ''Bywyd Gwyllt Glaslyn Wildlife''. The project continues successfully.

History and background

Since their disappearance in 1916 from

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

(''Pandion haliaetus'') have returned to Scotland (in the 1950s), England and Wales. The first pair breeding in Wales were found in 2004 near Porthmadog. In 2004, due to bad weather and rot in the upper branches of the tree, the

nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materia ...

collapsed. Before the next season in 2005, a platform was constructed with help from local school children. In 2005 the pair returned, took up residence on the specially made platform, and raised the first known Welsh

brood Brood may refer to: Nature * Brood, a collective term for offspring * Brooding, the incubation of bird eggs by their parents * Bee brood, the young of a beehive * Individual broods of North American Periodical Cicadas: ** Brood X, the largest bro ...

. The nest is being monitored via a

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral d ...

. Each year since 2004 the osprey chicks that hatched have been ringed and recorded. This has enabled them to be identified on their return to the UK where many have been seen in subsequent years and bred successfully themselves. The original osprey Welsh pair returned every year and bred successfully until 2015 when the male bird did not reappear from Africa in the spring. However, a new male arrived and bonded successfully with the resident female and bred successfully that year. They continued to breed until 2021 when the male was injured and the chicks which had hatched did not survive, but the pair both returned in 2022 and successfully raised another brood. In 2021, in an act of vandalism, a nest platform at

Llyn Brenig Llyn Brenig is a reservoir located on Denbigh Moors in North Wales. The artificial lake, which was constructed between 1973 and 1976, was created by building an embankment dam across the ''Afon Brenig'' valley. It lies at above sea level on t ...

was cut down.

Pont Croesor Station

In 2010 the

Pont Croesor railway station Pont Croesor is a railway halt in Wales, on the Welsh Highland Railway, which runs through the Snowdonia National Park from Caernarfon to Porthmadog. It is located on the section between the stations of and . Originally, as part of the Croesor ...

of the

Welsh Highland Railway The Welsh Highland Railway (WHR) or Rheilffordd Eryri is a long, restored narrow gauge heritage railway in the Welsh county of Gwynedd, operating from Caernarfon to Porthmadog, and passing through a number of popular tourist destinations in ...

was built near the site.

References

External links

Glaslyn Wildlife
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rspb Glaslyn Osprey Project Nature reserves in Wales Dolbenmaen

History and background

Pont Croesor Station

See also

References

External links