Stan has remained on the Cape Verdes but has started to move about and explore a little. On the 24th he left Sao Nicolau and flew to Sao Vicente. He stayed there for 7 hours and then flew through the night on to Santo Antao, where he has remained, moving up and down the SW coast. This is a mountainous island and the location at the south end near Tarrifal is a place I have visited and remember finding an opsrey nest high in a mountain gorge sveral thousnad feet above the sea. A most incredible nests.- can’t wait for the next set of transmissions to see if he remains here or heads off to mainland Africa.

sept 19-26

What would be very interesting would be if Stan decides that over ocean migrations are not for him and that he decides to settle in the Cape Verde .  He could be a very usfelu genetic addition to this small population of ospreys

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