THE migration of the ospreys has begun, writes Diane Bennett, Tweed Valley Osprey Project Officer.

The Tweed Valley born female FK8, who has spent the summer up in the Forsinard Flows region near Loch Slethill, left the area and headed south on August 12, leaving Lochan na Saughe Glaise at 9.51am and flying 400km to roost overnight just south of Rochester near Otterburn. 

She stopped her journey at 6.55pm having been flying at an average of 44.4km/hr.

At 7.30am on August 13, she headed off again, this time steering her course slightly westerly into the central English belt over major cities of Leeds and Birmingham, reaching heights of over 1.5km in high density city areas and dropping back down to around 400m to 500m in more rural areas. 

She dropped down to about 160m altitude while scouting out a roost site, which she found in a stand of trees just outside Redditch, having covered another 340km during the day’s flight.

After a good night’s rest she was away again at 7.12 the next morning and covered just 118km to south of the Bristol Channel to Bishop Sutton where she discovered Chew Valley Lake at 2pm. And it would seem she caught herself a fish, as she left the water and headed into trees where she spent about an hour.

She stayed in the area and roosted in a group of trees to the east of the Lake and moved during the early hours to another stand of trees nearby. Maybe she was disturbed or mobbed by birds for being the outsider raptor in the area and deemed a threat... 

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