Archives for September 2012

No change

September 24, 2012

Still stopping over to the west of Madrid

Stan has reached the Cape Verdes islands !!!!

September 20, 2012

Wow what an osprey – Amazingly Stan has managed to fly over 1560 km (967 miles) over the Atlantic Ocean to make safe landfall on the Cape Verdes. Last evening, while I was on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong, Stan was flapping the last stretch over the ocean to an island called Sao Nicolau (I’ve flown over it a couple of times on my way to Sao Vicente while studying the CV ospreys). He was resting close to the sea at a headland at 2000 – (2200GMT), and non GPS data for 0208GMT and 0406GMT this morning showed that he was alive. The Cape Verdes have a small population of breeding ospreys which I think could comprise some lost exhausted birds from Europe. It’s got good fishing so as long as he recovers from his flight he should catch fish. I wonder if he will stay there or fly back to Senegal – he might even stay and join the local breeders. I always wanted to satellite track ospreys on the Cape Verdes and now we have one. One previous Scottish osprey has been found in CV – a bird ringed by Roger Broad found dead on Fogo. Stan is an amazing osprey.

Flight to Cape Verdes

Northern Cape Verdes

Point on Sao Nicolau

Reed – a young male marsh harrier from Moray

September 19, 2012

With the help of Martin Cook, I satellite tagged a young male marsh harrier at a nest that he had located in the county of Moray. He had ringed the two young and I fitted tag 21253 – a non GPS satellite tag. For the first month the young harrier ranged in the general area of the breeding site. Then on last day of August he moved to Aberdeen and then north to a large area inland from the Ythan estuary