Faced with a flighty female and some serious doubts over paternity, the anger of the jealous male knows no bounds.

How would a man feel if he had just returned home to Scotland from a long sojourn in Africa only to find that his wife had given birth to two offspring that were clearly not his own, given that he had been abroad for so long?

Henry the osprey did not take it well. He flew into the family nest at Loch Garten, near Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands, from his 3,000-mile spring migration, to find that EJ, his regular partner, had got there first and was incubating two eggs.

Having flown all the way from West Africa, Henry then flew into a rage. He deftly kicked one egg clean out of the nest and watched as it smashed on the ground below. He duffed his next shot, and the second egg landed precariously on the outer edge of the nest.

Observers from the RSPB had their suspicions that feathers might fly. They had noticed EJ arriving from Africa early in the company of VS, an old flame with a reputation for troublemaking.

Henry decided that another man’s children had no place in his life, and to rectify matters he immediately mated with EJ. Then, as any man might do in such a situation, he went fishing. Birdwatchers were delighted, hoping he would accept any more offspring as his own.

But their worst fears were realised. Henry returned from his fishing trip to find two new eggs in the nest. But who was the father? Henry, far from convinced that it was him, booted them out of the nest too.

Richard Thaxton, manager at the RSPB site, said: “We really hoped that the last two eggs would be accepted by Henry. Unfortunately, he clearly sensed that these eggs weren’t his either, and he’s not going to bring up another bird’s chicks.”

Whether VS had been popping round in Henry’s absence is uncertain, but Henry clearly thought he had. The chance of Henry and EJ mating again this season is seen as unlikely.

“Henry is a much more reliable osprey, a good provider of fish and something of a hero really. He would always be our male osprey of choice if we had anything to do with it,” Mr Thaxton said. “VS is something of a rogue, having disrupted breeding at the site in recent years, two-timing EJ with a female of his own elsewhere.”

Ospreys were wiped out as a nesting species in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the final pairs were killed in the early 1900s. They began to return in the 1950s, with Loch Garten the launchpad for their revival.

Since then more than 70 chicks have been reared at the site and the population, now estimated at more than 160 pairs, has spread. Half of them probably don’t know who their father is, although they could make an educated guess.

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