Lake+District+ospreys+lay+eggs+in+new+nest+site

An osprey ready to pounce. Photograph: Mark Courtney/AP Two of the best-known parents in the north of England have celebrated the bank holiday by laying a clutch of three eggs at their new home in the Lake District. The fish-hunting ospreys of Bassenthwaite lake caused concern last month by moving from a purpose-built nest provided by the Forestry Commission and the Lake District national park authority to a site on the other side of the lake. But the relocation - unusual for a species known to nest in favourite sites for 100 years without moving - has proved a boost to a breeding success now in its eighth year. Round the clock monitors of the birds, who guard them against disturbance and egg thieves, say that the female is now spending almost all her time on the nest and almost certainly incubating a full clutch. "We're delighted that the ospreys have settled into their new nest so quickly," said Peter Barron of the Lake District Osprey Project, which is run by the two authorities and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. "We're now hoping that the eggs hatch successfully in early June." The chicks' debut will be visible through an impressive range of hidden telescopes, hides and a camera link to a videowall at Whinlatter park centre near the village of Braithwaite. The ospreys have proved one of the Lake District's biggest wildlife attractions, with a scheduled Osprey Bus ferrying sightseers to observation points. Staff have had to move as quickly as the birds to re-site viewing areas to cover the new nest. Ospreys were persecuted into extinction in 1916 by gamekeepers who mistakenly believed that they were a threat to salmon fisheries. Strays returned to Loch Garten on Speyside in the early 1950s. The Cumbrian birds arrived in the late 1990s from a breed-and-release programme of Scottish birds on Rutland Water. Their brilliant hunting is helped by powerful talons and hundreds of tiny spikes on their feet which trap their slippery prey. The osprey's grip is so powerful that young birds have been drowned after seizing fish too big and powerful for them to lift.