Very sad email on 27th May from  Ignacio Gamez Carmona of the  Government of La Rioja to say that they had collected the dead body of Fearna at Enciso on 26th. I have asked for more details and some photographs, and will update this webpage as soon as they arrive. It is very disappointing that this young osprey which came north to Europe in its first summer instead of summering in West Africa has come to grief.

Fearna has remained in the hills of Northern Spain – in the last days she has been on small rivers near Enciso, 37 km SE of Logrono

Fearna spent the last couple days doing a circuit of the big plain between Logrona and Belorado – is she going to stay for a while or move opn north.

May 13th to 15th

Fearna flew 200 km north today to a small river near Pradillo in the Rioja region, but I did not get intervening GPS data yet to show her route. The map shows start and finish points

May 12th

Fearna set off early on 11th and flew NE over Cordoba and at midday was just south of Portullano. She was following the track of many a northward migrating osprey and by evening after a flight of 360km she stopped for the night by the banks of the Rio Tajo, jest west of Buendia Reservoir.  It is going to prove very interesting to follow this young osprey for the first her first summer using GPS transmitter data. We did have a young Rutland Water translocated osprey come back to the UK in 2002 as a one year old, but she had wintered in Portugal and we only got a few non GPS locations in the UK. This is the first one trcked over the whole Africa to Europe migration.

May 11th

Fearna was so settled along the River Senegal for her first summer in West Africa that I had reduced collecting data to every 10 days. Imagine my surprise when I found that she was in southern Spain.

She was still on the Senegal on 3oth April and then she set off north towards the desert – her earlier migrations were modest at 193 km on 3rd and 143 km on 4th when she roosted in the Sahara Desert SE of Fderik iron ore mine. By 6th she was in southern Morocco and then on next two days had big flights north of 568 km on 7th and 444 km on 8th May. She crossed the Straits on 10th May and flew over Barbate Reservoir at 1300GMT and Guadalcacin reservoir an hour later. By nightfall she was roosting by a small reservoir south of Almodovar del Rio.

This is the first time we have tracked a one year north from Westr Africa to Europe  – it is an unusual event so it is going to be most interesting to see if she visits UK or stays in Spain, and when she returns south to Africa.

May 1st – 10th

Fearna is now living in quite a small area (13 square km) of wetlands beteen two small rivers south of the main stream of the River Senegal. Life gets easier once all the adult ospreys have gone north and the fishing is left to the juveniles.

April 24th to 30th

Fearna has changed her behaviour ad is now roosting at night nearer the river – this could be due to the fact that any adult or sub-adult ospreys will have migrated north and left the wintering grounds free for last summer’s  juvenile ospreys.

April 10th to 24th

Fearna in usual area – very clear daily behaviour of roosting at night 12 km SW of feeding area. The adult ospreys are now withdrawing from Africa so the juveniles have greater freedom to fish at the best places.

March 23rd to April 3rd

Fearna is living in the same area in northen Senegal. She made one quick trip north of the river into Mauritania on 16th March, and has been living in  a range of 290 square km.

March 10th to 23rd