Great news, Mallachie has made a successful channel crossing, phew!
She left HM Prison Hewell yesterday morning at 5am and made tremendous progress. She dropped down through Worcestershire, through Gloucestershire in to Hampshire, out over The Solent to Isle of Wight then headed out to sea, making for the French coast.
Her route was approximately as follows; Fackenham, Bishampton, Southam north of Cheltenham, Kemble south west of Cirencester, West Kennett, Totton in Hampshire, Brading on the I.o.W - (new RSPB reserve there), then out over the sea at 3pm yesterday. Her crossing took her a couple of hours until she reached the Normandy coast of France. She roosted last night near a place called Fonguesemare, but was on the move again at 5am this morning, the last fix on her that we have for now.
It is a relief to know that she has safely made her first serious sea-crossing and reached France. Perhaps she will now progress down towards Bordeaux and meet up with Rothes. Now that would be amazing. We shall see. Talking of Rothes, yes she is still in the same general area, La Gironde. She has made a few trips out - across the river and back, back down to that nuclear power station again, yet always returning to Dr Jones' sturgeon farm to roost.
Here on site, having said yesterday that White TF had gone, well he was back again this morning, seen by the trickle of visitors that we are still getting amidst packing up the Centre an' all. In answer to your collective questions from your blog comments; yes it is all a bit bleak here right now. The packing up is all a bit sombre, so White TF's re-appearance lifted us a bit. The weather is horrible with 36 hours of non-stop rain, causing localised flooding in the area and, with all the dampness, the midges are absolutely hellish. However we all went out for an end-of-season meal last night and a jolly good time was had by all. The blog page will continue even after we have closed. Alice and I will be doing it. We will get daily data on the birds until sometime in October, by which time we hope they will have reached their winter quarters in West Africa somewhere. After which, the data will become weekly. And the final answer to a question in the comments - yes I do have to the toilets at some point! Compost anyone? It would make good grow-bag content. Perhaps we should consider a buy-your-own-back scheme! Hmmm, maybe not.
There's a tinge of sadness amongst the team today, as David Anderson leaves us tonight. He's away to a new post, working at Gartmorn Dam in Clackmannanshire. It is a council run nature reserve with important populations of over-wintering wildfowl. The RSPB are in partnership with Clackmannanshire Council to run a project there over the winter months. His contract is for five months so he will be there until the end of January. So we say goodbye and good luck to David and our many thanks to him for all his efforts at Loch Garten this season. The rest of the team are here with me until next Friday.
Mallachie's latest movements should up-date on the map later this evening but I've run out of road today now, so have not up-dated Rothes movements, which are only very slight anyway.
Have a good weekend.