This thread has been set up to follow the travels of Caledonia and Alba, the young ospreys raised at Loch Garten in 2012.
Their mother is “EJ”, the resident female at Loch Garten since 2003; there is some doubt about the identity of their biological father, given EJ’s dalliance with a male from a neighbouring nest, Blue XD, both before and after the return of her regular partner Odin, who raised them.
Caledonia hatched on 16th May and Alba on 18th May; they both fledged on 14th July.
This is a link to the Loch Garten blog describing the ringing and satellite tagging.
Caledonia’s ring is Blue/White AA1, reading downwards. Alba’s is Blue/White AA2, reading upwards.
Following the tracking
This page gives a quick overview of the routes on a map, which will be more useful once they start migrating.
If you want to look at the routes in more detail on Google Earth, this page contains instructions on setting up your PC to do this.
This blog contains some useful information about how the tracking works – we are now on a 3-day reporting period.
Caledonia is approximately 80 miles from the wintering location of Beatrice. I am hoping that Caledonia will stay in Spain as it appears to be safer than moving on to West Africa. There must be quite a number of ospreys in southern Spain as 2 are regularly seen at El Hondo throughout the winter.
Extraordinary bad luck for Alba as Swedish osprey 19153 spent 2 winters in the same area without any problems whatsoever.
Alan do you think that Alba had elected to move or did something happen on the island which caused her to move?
It seems that island is a bit of a bird paradise which of course could have some predators.
Tiger Signature
Hazel b said: If one looks closely at the map for Alba it does show that whatever happened did so on Saturday 20th October. That last point on 20th October is in the sea. Question is how did she then get to her last recorded postion?
If one looks closely at the map for Alba it does show that whatever happened did so on Saturday 20th October. That last point on 20th October is in the sea.
Question is how did she then get to her last recorded postion?
Tiger, is there any indication of what height she was at on that fix over the sea on 20th October?
EJ's Memorial Balgavies Loch Ospreys 2023
Tiger : It seems unlikely that Alba would have decided to move unless there was some major event which caused her distress. Alba had settled into a routine which seemed to be suiting her well and was obviously not bothered by the returning adult ospreys who may have chased her off. It is all a bit of a mystery and I suppose we will never know unless the remains/transmitter are recovered. The LG tagged birds seem to have had really bad luck in Africa but then Sweden took 15 years to get one of their tagged youngsters to return.
Unknown said:Tiger, is there any indication of what height she was at on that fix over the sea on 20th October?
I do not think so. The data from Loch Garten is nowhere near as good as that provided by Dyfi, SWT or Rutland.
That last point on 20th October does seem odd.
No, looking for height, speed etc was the first thing I did, without success.
The more I look at it, the stranger it seems.
ChloeB & Tiger's Osprey Data
Unknown said:Tiger : It seems unlikely that Alba would have decided to move unless there was some major event which caused her distress.
That is exactly what I think. In my view something happened on the island or rather on the sand around the island. She did seem to spend a lot of time loafing about on the sand.
I prefer ospreys to be in trees rather than the ground and this is why I worry a bit for Ceulan.
On the properties she was at 0 metres which would tend to indicate she was at sea level fishing perhaps.
Unknown said: On the properties she was at 0 metres which would tend to indicate she was at sea level fishing perhaps.
But it would have been odd for her to be fishing there wouldn't it?
The big question is how she travelled the 17 km? Personally I think that she must have flown that distance as there does not seem any other reasonable mechanism unless someone can come up with one?