Nimrod completed a very competent migration from South Wales to Brittany, and he has now settled in a little estuary to the north of La Rochelle. I think he’s having a few days stop-over, but may be he will stay longer. Interestingly, Beatrice and Morven have also stayed put at stop-over sites. Ken McGinigal emailed in with some nice photographs (below) of Beatrice’s stop-over site on the River Guadiaro. He and his girl friend looked for Beatrice on the 15th September, but did not manage to find her – he says it was a very hot day.

On the 27th September, another interesting osprey report came in from Justin and Kit Coates, who had been holidaying on Grand Canaria – they had photographed an osprey (to the right) at the La Charca nature reserve on the Canary Islands on 24th September, and noted that it was colour ringed white/black NM. Amazingly, this bird is a juvenile ringed this July near Lairg by Brian Etheridge, and is the sister of the young male identified at Boultham Mere, Lincoln 16th August – 14th September. (My blog of 21st September). They photographed it catching a fish and it looked fit, although a primary feather on the left wind was broken. The likelihood is that this osprey migrated long distances over the Atlantic Ocean, possibly even from the UK or Ireland direct to the Canaries on a strong tail wind. There have been previous Scottish ospreys on the Canaries, but this is an exciting record. As I write I’ve just heard from the Loch Garten wardens that Deshar, one of the Garten young, was flying this morning in the open ocean between Portugal and the Azores – and everybody was wishing it a safe landfall. Here in Scotland a late osprey was still in the Highlands near Loch Insh on Thursday, seen by Dave Pierce at the same as he saw his first four whooper swans of the autumn, fresh in from Iceland.

Angus, the young male golden eagle came back to his home range yesterday after a few days away in North Perthshire – today he even spent 3 hours sitting in the exact cliffs where he was reared. It is exciting to watch the travels of these young eagles as they learn to explore the Highlands. On the island of Mull, one of the young sea eagles made its first real flight away from its parents nesting area, and the first google map is shown on the webpage for Mara

Late news – email from Andy Patterson (Torremolinus) – “Just a quick note to let you know that the weather down here in Andalucía is vile, grey and with a very welcome rain , at times of >40 litres /sq.m per day, so do not expect too much movement from any of your birds.” – so that’s means Beatrice and the Honey Buzzard will not go to Africa tomorrow.