Well it's the start of another week, I trust some of you had a enjoyable time at some point over the weekend, counting the birds in your garden for Big Garden Bird Watch
Rothes had a pretty uneventful week, sticking with Ilha de Unhocomozinho for the entire week. She was over the sea on Sunday morning (24th January), I'm assuming fishing, but for the rest of the week the satellite only caught her dodging about on the island. Anyway, the data is in and the map should update sometime this evening.
And now for a contribution from Richard:
Hope for Mallachie?
Richard was talking to Claire Buchanan who works for us from the North Scotland Office in Inverness, who is tracking 12 red kites. What she had to say gives us hope that just possibly, all could be well for Mallachie. From early-mid Nov Claire began losing contact with some of her birds. It was as if they had simply switched off and gone all quiet for weeks on end, with only the occasional bit of no-quality data leaking through. Lately though, Claire has started to hear back from 9 of the tags which has been a good sign, though there are still 3 out there with which there has been no contact from since before Christmas, whereabouts unknown.
As well as tracking the kites and being able to literally check up on any fixes received, Claire has the luxury of being able to go and look for birds that she isn't hearing from and so has been able to determine that her birds are at least ok - she's seen them - but for some reason they are just not transmitting. The possible explanation for her birds is that the solar-powered tags just aren't getting enough battery charge given the very short, dull winter days up here in hyperborea - at least not enough to charge up to a level where they can transmit any data. The extreme cold temperatures up here will not help either.
Now this scenario would of course apply far less to Mallachie, down there in warm, sunny West Africa, but if the tag on her back has become obscured by her feathers, or perhaps mucky with mud or algae from fishing maybe, or poo-ed on by another bird perhaps - imagine if she perched in amongst a cormorant or pelican colony for example - though unlikely, I know. But who knows? It does at least give us some hope that we may not have heard the last from Mallachie.
Claire has a website http://www.eyestotheskies.org.uk where you can follow what the kites are up to.
Up-date on the mains power project.
The latest up-date on monies received from the blog towards the mains power project at Loch Garten is now a magnificent £4,975. This is a tremendous effort, thank you so much. It has helped enormously and is very much appreciated.
There's more good news too. We have been awaiting word from two potential funding pots; Cairngorm National Park Authority and LEADER+ and both have just confirmed that they will indeed be contributing to this project. Phew!
Originally we asked you to help raise £7,000 towards the project costs and so far you've raised almost £5,000 of this which is fantastic, but with these two grants, the project funding package is now in place, so thank you. However, we would like to continue satellite tagging young ospreys at Loch Garten and need to find funding for tags for this year, so any further donations can be directed towards these costs, and would be much appreciated too.
Once again, thank you for all your support, you've been brilliant. - Richard
More next week.