Everyone has an opinion
I made a decision to publish the opinions of Von and his concerns about the RSPB not saving the chick..... I decided to do this because he is entitled to his opinion and the point he made was put in a sensible and well constructed way.
I may have opened a can of worms by doing this but the blog is not just for self congratulatory comments... we want to know what you think and if you disagree with what we do then say so.
Our policy is to be as non-interventional as we can be, this may seem a little strange when we are going to ring and satellite tag the chicks, it is not. The ringing and tagging of the chicks will give us vital data which will assist our understanding of osprey ecology, this data is invaluable to our further understanding of the birds.
Ringing and tagging does not interfere with the natural processes. There would be no point in doing it if it did since the data obtained would be skewed as a result and therefore useless. Compare that to visiting the nest to take an obvious weak chick and hand rear it... That is interfering with nature.
In broader conservation terms ospreys are doing better now in Scotland, and the rest of Great Britain, than ever before. This can only be because they are producing a good surplus of viable chicks, our smallest chick was not one of those.
I do understand the depth of feeling of many of our readers, and I do not expect you all to agree with our policy. I believe that we gave our smallest chick a fighting chance of survival as a wild bird, when it got to the point where the female rejected it that was too late for us to intervene even if we wanted to. Nature dictates what happens and unfortunately our wee chick died.
I'd like to draw a line under this debate now, let's look forward to the fledging of the two remaining chicks and leave the unfortunate death behind us. We are never going to find common ground on this... So let's agree to disagree and move on.