Boat of Garten squatters welcomed
A "CANNY" pair of migrants have taken up lodgings in the famous osprey nest at Loch Garten by Boat of Garten.
Ospreys EJ, Odin and their brood of two chicks are on the top floor in the penthouse suite whilst a family of redstarts have just occupied the basement of the eyrie.
Redstarts are a sparrow-sized, colourful summer migrant to UK, and usually nest in holes or cracks in trees but will use nestboxes too. Mr Richard Thaxton, RSPB Scotland site manager at Loch Garten, said: "Though we usually have a pair of redstarts nesting somewhere near the osprey centre most years, we’ve never actually had them in the osprey nest itself.
"The osprey eyrie at Loch Garten is about four feet deep and about six feet across, and the redstarts have built their nest deep in amongst the sticks
"We could hear a male redstart singing via the microphone in the ospreys nest and saw him adopt the adjacent tree as his song post.
"Then we started to see him carrying nesting material into the base of the osprey eyrie."
He added: "This is canny behaviour on the part of the redstarts. Their much, much larger rapacious landlords, the ospreys, pose no threat whatsoever to the diminutive redstarts, if for no other reason than ospreys feed solely on fish."
But the benefits to the redstarts are enormous, he said.
"To have such large birds of prey acting like bouncers outside your nest, posing an intimidating barrier to any would-be threats from birds like crows for example, must give confidence to the redstarts."
Whilst unusual for redstarts, such behaviour is not entirely unknown for some other species.
In parts of Europe both house and Spanish sparrows routinely make their nests in the foundations of nests of large birds of prey and white storks.
Mr Thaxton said: "The landlord species probably aren’t bothered by the lodgers or squatters beneath, perhaps even benefiting from them taking irritating flies and other insects from around the nest, and so are tolerant of them.
He said that the arrangement was of mutual benefit to both landlord and lodger species. "It provides extra vigilance for one another as they act as sentinels for any approaching danger."
