It's hard to think that it was only in June 2012 that we started to transmit the first live pictures from an osprey nest in Wales. Two and a half years later and over 100,000 people have, at some point in their lives, tuned in to see what's happening on the Dyfi nest. In that time we have uploaded 250 Terabytes of data - that's 1,000 000 000 000 000 bytes (one quadrillion) or, if you prefer, a quarter of a Petabyte. And all down a copper wire BT exchange!
 
June 2012: Nora feeds Ceulan whilst Monty looks on. Little did they know what the weather had in store the following day...

Last week, on St. Davids Day, we turned the cameras back on for the 2015 season. We've been working hard over the winter to make some more improvements to the Live Streaming and the audio - 2015 should be the best and most stable connection yet. We've also made some improvements to the cameras; the pictures we're getting back are some of the best we’ve ever seen.
 
So far, the warm-up acts have included frog-eating ravens, a preening buzzard, a plethora of small birds looking for nesting material and this stunning female kestrel. It’s hard to imagine Live Streaming cameras getting more beautiful pictures…

Today we are setting up our annual appeal to raise funds to pay for the Live Streaming for the next six months; the amount it costs is approximately £10,000 a year, same as in 2014.
 
We’ve decided not to go down the Register-and-Pay route once again. If people want to watch the Dyfi ospreys and genuinely can’t afford to pay, they can still watch. We don’t receive any grant funding to run the Dyfi Osprey Project directly, nor the Live Streaming, we rely on donations each year and this appeal to run the cameras.
 
Please help us financially if you possibly can. There are four ways you can donate:
 
1. Via the BT MyDonate button on the Live Streaming page (best, as BT don’t take a cut and you can click a box for Gift Aid if you pay tax in the UK – another 25% is added to your amount by the tax man)
 
2. Via the PayPal button on the Live Streaming page
 
3. By sending a cheque payable to ‘Dyfi Osprey Project’ to
 
Emyr Evans
Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust
42 Broad Street
Welshpool
Powys
SY21 8SR
 
4. At DOP itself

We expect to see some osprey activity by the end of March. Monty usually arrives during the first week in April, but there’s a good chance that Blue 24 will be back earlier with a brand new 2015 Strategic Plan up her sleeve. Glesni will hopefully be back in March sometime too and we are also expecting to see two old friends again this year (and maybe another one from 2011?).
 
Glesni’s first offspring, two daughters from 2013 called Cerist and Clarach

Thank you for all your help, I will write updates on the progress we make underneath this post.
 
Here are some 2015 techie details:
 

• Four High Definition 1920 X 1080 cameras in 2015 – all controllable via pan-tilt-zoom operations.
• LS camera selection will be altered throughout the season to give the best views possible at a particular time in the breeding season. We start with CAM 2, offering panoramic views of the Dyfi River and the hills of Snowdonia National Park.
• Two professional grade microphone systems
• LS will not be switched off in the evening and back on again in the morning. It will stay on continuously throughout the day, for six months.
• We’ll do 360 Cam-Tours of the surrounding landscape at various times throughout the summer!

Finally, what better demonstration of the magic of HD Live Streaming than the Herculean battle between Blue 24 and Glesni for the Dyfi nest last year, amazing footage.
 
Here it is again…