Last 14th of January, the second edition of the Osprey Day was held in Andalusia. This event is promoted and coordinated by Amigos del Águila Pescadora (Friends of the Osprey), and comprises the Wintering Ospreys Count in Andalusia. Remarkably, over 100 observers and 15 entities participated, and Birding The Strait was pleased to be one of them for the second consecutive year.
As shown in the following figure, a total of 160 individuals (137 in 2016) were recorded, showing a marked western distribution. Indeed, nearly 50% of the individuals were found within Cádiz province. Among them, 20 Ospreys have chosen the reservoirs, rivers and the coastline of the Strait of Gibraltar as wintering quarters this year.
Among the later, two individual Ospreys deserve special attention. One of them is an adult Corsican female which we have been delighted to observe and photograph in our region over the last four winters. This bird was fitted with a green colour ring white code CAT and a GPS device in the Mediterranean island by Flavio Monti. This link to Movebanks shows the spectacular migration of CAT over the sea from her breeding site in Corsica to the Strait of Gibraltar in the autumn 2013 and back in the spring 2014 (following a route south of the Balearic Islands).
Coincidentally, CAT has been sharing part of his wintering ground in the Strait of Gibraltr with Beatrice, a very special Osprey that Roy Dennis fitted with a satellite tracking device in 2008 in Scotland. In autumn 2011 Roy Dennis and a team from the BBC Autumnwatch visited the Strait aiming to film Beatrice. Javi, that time working for Fundación Migres, was pleased to be their guide and took them to the river section where the Scottish Osprey was most regularly seen. Sadly, in March 2016 Beatrice died in Northern Spain because she could not catch fish in the swollen rivers caused by a long period of heavy rain. Beatrice has left a huge legacy on which we will write in a future blog post. Likewise, the Osprey migration across the Strait of Gibraltar and the successfully reintroduced breeding population will be future subjects on the Birding The Strait blog. Stay tuned!
