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male bird from nature reserve near Forfar spotted on a beach in west Africa
after 18 months
Thursday
4 February 2016 16.59 GMTLast modified on Friday 5 February
201600.35 GMT
An
osprey that went missing from a Scottish nature reserve for more than 18
months has been found almost 3,000 miles away – on a beach in Senegal.
The
three-year-old male bird,
known as Blue YD, was tagged with a lightweight satellite tracker in July 2012
at a Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) reserve near Forfar.
Yet
the device stopped transmitting in May 2014, leaving the wildlife trust relying
on eyewitness accounts to learn of Blue YD’s whereabouts, according to which
the bird had been spotted various times in North Yorkshire and St Andrews in
Fife.
But
the bird has now been found to have joined the winter osprey migration to west
Africa.
Blue
YD was spotted in Senegal by a sister organisation. Leicestershire and
Rutland WildlifeTrust had travelled to Lompoul sur Mer to look for another
osprey, but found instead the bird that had gone missing for one-and-a-half
years. SWT said it was “thrilled” at the news.
John
Wright, from the Rutland osprey project, said: “This is the second visit I’ve
made to Lompoul sur Mer and both times I’ve counted around 100 ospreys
consisting many German and Scottish birds.”
He
added: “It was fantastic to see that Blue YD was alive and well. He’ll no doubt
be enjoying the final few weeks of warmth before he makes his way back to the
UK for the breeding season at the end of March.”
Once
extinct in the UK, there are now about 240 breeding osprey pairs in the UK
thanks to conservation projects, the SWT said.
Seen
in flight from below, the osprey has white or slightly mottled underparts. The
fish-eating bird with long, angled wings has been on an Amber list of species
for conservation as it is in historical decline due to illegal killing, and low
breeding numbers.
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