The osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is a medium-large raptor which is a specialist fish-eater with a worldwide distribution. The subspecies Pandion haliaetus haliaetus is native to Eurasia and is found in the British Isles, where it is a scarce breeder primarily in Scotland, with smaller numbers in England and Wales. It became extinct in the British Isles in 1916, but recolonised in 1954. Scandinavian birds migrate through Britain on the way to their breeding sites.
The osprey formerly inhabited much of Britain, but heavy persecution, mainly by Victorian egg and skin collectors, during the 19th and early 20th centuries brought about its demise. The osprey became extinct as a breeding bird in England in 1840. It is generally considered that the species was absent from Scotland from 1916 to 1954, although there is some evidence that it continued to breed in Strathspey in the 1930s and 40s. [1] It is not thought to have inhabited Wales at thats time: in Ireland it appears to have died out in the early 19th century.
The British population has grown from 2 known breeding pairs in 1967 to 150 pairs in 2000, 250 pairs in 2018, and a most recent estimate in 2023 of nearly 300 pairs. [2] [3]
In 1954 Scandinavian birds recolonised Scotland naturally, and a pair has nested successfully almost every year since 1959 at Loch Garten Osprey Centre, Abernethy Forest Reserve, in the Scottish Highlands. This osprey centre has become one of the most well-known conservation sites in the UK, and has attracted over 2 million visitors since 1959. [4]
The early recolonisation was very slow because of contamination of the food chain by organochlorine pesticides and the activities of egg collectors. To protect the birds and increase their survival rates, "Operation Osprey" was launched. Barbed wire and electric wires were placed around the trees where the birds nested, and a watch was kept over them through the night.
Some chicks from Scottish nests have been moved to England and Spain (Urdaibai Bird Center) to establish new breeding populations. [5]
In 2022 Sacha Dench led a project which followed three satellite-tagged juvenile ospreys from the osprey project in the Tweed Valley Forest Park on their first migration south. Two of the young ospreys perished; the third was reported in November 2022 to be in Spain. [6]
The population in Scotland was estimated at 250 breeding pairs in 2023. . [7]
Because of the slow geographical spread of breeding ospreys within Scotland, in 1996 English Nature and Scottish Natural Heritage licensed a project to re-introduce the osprey to central England. Over six years, chicks from Scottish nests were moved to the Nature Reserve at Rutland Water in the Midlands area, where they were released. Funding was provided by Anglian Water and the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust managed the project supported by a large team of volunteers.
In 1999 some of the translocated birds returned after their migration from Africa and in 2001 the first pair bred, including the eponymous Mr Rutland. In 2022 there were 26 adult ospreys and up to 10 breeding pairs in the area of Rutland Water. [8] In 2023 the project announced that 250 chicks had now fledged since the first in 2001. [9]
In 1999 a pair from the Scottish population bred for the first time in the Lake District at Bassenthwaite Lake. In 2021 there were 6 established nests in the Lake District where ospreys raised a total of 15 chicks. [10]
In June 2009 a pair produced three young at Kielder Forest; these are the first to breed at Kielder for over 200 years. [11] In 2023 eleven chicks fledged from nests at Kielder, making a total over the life of the project of 115. [12]
In 2017 a project was started to reintroduce ospreys to the Poole Harbour area. The first egg at a nest site put in place by the project was laid in 2022. [13] Two chicks hatched in early June 2022 and were ringed in July. [14] One of the chicks died in August after a predation attempt by a goshawk. [15] Three more chicks were hatched in May–June 2023. They fledged in July and migrated in August.
In 2022 further locations where ospreys had bred successfully for the first time were made public in North Yorkshire [16] and Leicestershire. [17]
An unexpected result of the Rutland translocation project was the establishment of two nests in Wales in 2004. One was near Welshpool in Montgomeryshire and the other at the RSPB Glaslyn Osprey Project at Pont Croesor, near Porthmadog in north Wales. In both cases the adult male, although originally from Scotland, had been translocated to Rutland. In 2022 the female osprey at Glaslyn returned for a 19th breeding season at the site, from which she has raised 41 young. [18] The Glaslyn female did not return from migration in 2023, but a new female joined the established male at the nest and successful breeding continued at the site. [19]
In 2011 the Dyfi Osprey Project reported that an unringed male osprey and a female which fledged from Rutland Water in 2008 had successfully raised chicks at a new nest site near the river Dyfi in Wales. By the end of 2019 the project had raised 19 chicks. [20]
In 2012 a new nest was reported in Snowdonia, and a single chick hatched successfully. [21] Since 2014 ospreys have been nesting successfully near Clywedog Reservoir in Powys, [22] and in 2018 a pair nested successfully for the first time at Llyn Brenig. [23] In 2023 a nest was found further south in Wales near Talybont on Usk. [24]
Ospreys are a species listed in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Offences under this Act include taking or owning eggs, damaging the birds or the nesting sites, and "intentionally or recklessly disturbing the bird while it is building a nest or is in, on or near a nest containing eggs or young or disturbing dependent young of such a bird". [25]
The websites of the wildlife organisations which protect and manage access to the nest sites at Loch Garten, Rutland Water, the Woodland Trust's Loch Arkaig, WWT Caerlaverock, Scottish Wildlife Trust at Loch of the Lowes and Dyfi, stream live webcam pictures of nesting birds during the breeding season (typically April–September). Loch Garten, Dyfi and the Highland Foundation for Wildlife have fitted satellite trackers to some chicks to improve understanding of migratory behaviour. The exact location of many nests is not widely disclosed due to the risk of eggs being stolen by egg collectors which, despite being made illegal in 1981 under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, continues to present a threat to rare nesting birds. [26] [27]
Many ospreys can be identified due to bird ringing carried out under the scheme administered by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Ospreys which have been ringed in Britain in recent years have a BTO metal ring one leg, and field readable blue "Darvic" ring on the other. [28] Any UK sighting of a colour ringed osprey should be reported to the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation which coordinates the ringing of the species nationally. [29]
Loch Garten is a large Highland freshwater loch near Boat of Garten, in the Strathspey area of the Cairngorms National Park, in Scotland. It is surrounded by the tall pine trees of the Abernethy Forest, a large area of which is an RSPB nature reserve. The loch is renowned for its breeding population of ospreys, which lend Boat of Garten its nickname "The Osprey Village".
The red kite is a medium-large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as eagles, buzzards, and harriers. The species currently breeds only in Europe, though it formerly also bred in west Asia and northwest Africa. Historically, it was only resident in the milder parts of its range in western Europe and northwestern Africa, whereas all or most red kites in northern mainland Europe wintered to the south and west, some also reaching western Asia, but an increasing number of northern birds now remain in that region year-round. Vagrants have reached north to Finland and south to Israel, Libya and Gambia.
The Atlantic puffin, also known as the common puffin, is a species of seabird in the auk family. It is the only puffin native to the Atlantic Ocean; two related species, the tufted puffin and the horned puffin are found in the northeastern Pacific. The Atlantic puffin breeds in Russia, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Greenland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and the Faroe Islands, and as far south as Maine in the west and France in the east. It is most commonly found in the Westman Islands, Iceland. Although it has a large population and a wide range, the species has declined rapidly, at least in parts of its range, resulting in it being rated as vulnerable by the IUCN. On land, it has the typical upright stance of an auk. At sea, it swims on the surface and feeds on zooplankton, small fish, and crabs, which it catches by diving underwater, using its wings for propulsion.
The Manx shearwater is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. The scientific name of this species records a name shift: Manx shearwaters were called Manks puffins in the 17th century. Puffin is an Anglo-Norman word for the cured carcasses of nestling shearwaters. The Atlantic puffin acquired the name much later, possibly because of its similar nesting habits.
The common murre, also called the common guillemot or foolish guillemot, is a large auk. It has a circumpolar distribution, occurring in low-Arctic and boreal waters in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. It spends most of its time at sea, only coming to land to breed on rocky cliff shores or islands.
Kielder Forest is a large forestry plantation in Northumberland, England, surrounding Kielder village and the Kielder Water reservoir. It is the largest man-made woodland in England with three-quarters of its 250 square miles (650 km2) covered by forest. The majority of the forest lies within Kielder Water and Forest Park, with the southern tip known as Wark Forest lying within Northumberland National Park. The forest is next to the England - Scotland border.
The Laysan albatross is a large seabird that ranges across the North Pacific. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are home to 99.7% of the population. This small gull-like albatross is the second-most common seabird in the Hawaiian Islands, with an estimated population of 1.18 million birds, and is currently expanding its range to new islands. The Laysan albatross was first described as Diomedea immutabilis by Lionel Walter Rothschild, in 1893, on the basis of a specimen from Laysan Island.
The Bermuda petrel is a gadfly petrel. Commonly known in Bermuda as the cahow, a name derived from its eerie cries, this nocturnal ground-nesting seabird is the national bird of Bermuda and can be found pictured on Bermudian currency. The Bermuda petrel is the second rarest seabird on the planet. They have medium-sized body and long wings, a greyish-black crown and collar, dark grey upper-wings and tail, white upper-tail coverts and white under-wings edged with black, and the underparts are completely white.
Llyn Brenig is a reservoir located on Denbigh Moors in North Wales. The artificial lake, which was constructed between 1973 and 1976, was created by building an embankment dam across the Afon Brenig valley. It lies at 1,200 ft (370 m) above sea level on the border between the counties of Conwy and Denbighshire. It is used to manage the flow in the River Dee as part of the River Dee regulation system.
Cranes are large, long-legged and long-necked birds of the order Gruiformes. Two species occur as wild birds in Great Britain: the common crane, a scarce migrant and very localised breeding resident currently being reintroduced to the country, and the sandhill crane, an extreme vagrant from North America. A third species, the demoiselle crane, has been recorded on a number of occasions, but these birds have not generally been accepted as being of wild origin.
The New Zealand fairy tern or tara-iti is a subspecies of the fairy tern endemic to New Zealand. It is New Zealand's rarest native breeding bird, with about 40 individuals left in the wild. It nests at four coastal locations between Whangarei and Auckland in the North Island. It is threatened by introduced predators, extreme storms and tides, beach activity, and waterfront development.
The flora and fauna of the Outer Hebrides in northwest Scotland comprises a unique and diverse ecosystem. A long archipelago, set on the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, it attracts a wide variety of seabirds, and thanks to the Gulf Stream a climate more mild than might be expected at this latitude. Because it is on the Gulf Stream, it also occasionally gets exotic visitors.
The Glaslyn Osprey Project is located in the Glaslyn Valley at Pont Croesor near Porthmadog in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. The project has supported ospreys since 2004 when they came to the Snowdonia National Park to breed after being absent from Wales for decades. The ospreys spend every winter in West Africa and travel thousands of miles to return to Glaslyn every year to breed and raise their chicks.
The Dyfi Osprey Project is a conservation project at the Cors Dyfi nature reserve near Derwenlas, in the county of Powys, Wales, under the management of the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust.
The eastern osprey is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey. They live in Oceania at coastal regions of the Australian continent, the Indonesian islands, New Guinea, and the Philippines. It is usually sedentary and pairs breed at the same nest site, building up a substantial structure on dead trees or limbs. The subspecies resides in a habitat close to coasts and estuaries that provide opportunities for fishing. In 2022, it was considered a defunct species by the IOC, due to its low genetic divergences and absence in morphological differences. The eastern osprey's diet consists mostly of vertebrate fish species. It possesses specialised physical characteristics and exhibits unique behaviour to assist in hunting and catching prey.
Mr Rutland, formally known by his ring number of 03(97), was a male osprey who was born in Scotland in 1997 and nested every summer near Rutland Water, England, from 1999 to 2015.
The year 2020 in birding and ornithology.
The year 2021 in birding and ornithology.
Lady's Tree is a Scots pine on the banks of the Loch of the Lowes, Scotland. It was the roost of famous osprey 'Lady' for 24 years. In 2014, Lady's Tree was named Scotland's Tree of the Year.
Cal Falcons is a website and social media community featuring three live streaming webcams trained on a peregrine falcon nest site atop Sather Tower at the University of California, Berkeley. Cal Falcons is known for its extensive social media presence and following. The live stream runs continuously throughout the year, recording all facets of the falcon lifecycle, including courtship, breeding, and raising young. The site launched with two cameras in January 2019.