Yesterday morning, when I checked Nimrod’s transmitter signals I found that he had flown south to Montrose Bay and roosted overnight, it seemed the perfect start to his migration. But today, he’s amazed me, because I find that after a short stay overnight, he decided to fly back home. A round trip of 174 miles in good weather – over country that he must know well. But why did he return – it’s a mystery – and after all these years it’s extremely interesting to learn that new things happen. Yesterday, I was emailing Elizabeth Tindall, who had told us that the female osprey at Wigtown, who was last seen on 9th September, had suddenly re-appeared on her favourite branch 8 days later – Elizabeth wanted to know my views on this and asked if any ospreys had wintered in the UK. They haven’t yet but with recent warmer winters it might be possible, especially since a couple of ospreys have wintered in recent years in southern Brittany on the French coast.

Reports have come in of ospreys staying quite long periods in different places in England this autumn. The two young ospreys, Deshar and Nethy, from Loch Garten are still on stop-overs in England and another was a young osprey ringed by Brian Etheridge near Lairg in Sutherland, which stayed at Boultham Mere, near Lincoln, from 16th August to 14th September. This photograph taken by the warden, Steve Botham, was sent to me and the ‘blown up’ images, on his website, show well the colouring (white/black NP). www.boulthamere.blogspot.com It’s incredible how well the new digital telephoto lens can pick out osprey rings, and let us identify them. A sadder account, is a young osprey found emaciated but alive in Weardale on 15th September and taken into care and hopefully recovery.

The honey buzzard roosted overnight in a big wood just north of Beachy Head. Beatrice and Morven stayed put on thei migrations, and there’s no word of Glen.