We've reached our target! We're delighted to have secured match funding from the Gordon and Ena Baxter Foundation, who are also helping support our education work with local schools to help children track the ospreys during their migration. This, combined with your generous donations and the support from Scottish Natural Heritage means we can go ahead and satellite tag the osprey chicks this year. We welcome any further donations, which will help boost our wider work for osprey and the other special wildlife of Abernethy. Thank you so much for your support, we could not have achieved this without your help! Love the Loch Garten Ospreys? Help us raise £6,600 for next year’s tags! Loch Garten, part of the RSPB Abernethy National Nature Reserve in the Highlands of Scotland, is the ancestral home of ospreys in Scotland. They returned to breed in the 1950s and have been doing so in springtime ever since, to be enjoyed by 35,000+ visitors each season, and seen collectively by 2.25 million visitors since 1959. Operation Osprey, as the project is known, has generated most of what we know about the ecology of ospreys, and yet still there is much to discover. Scottish ospreys are migratory birds present from April to the end of August, before departing for their winter quarters in West Africa. Adult birds move back and forth between Scotland and West Africa, but the juvenile birds leaving Loch Garten in late August have to make this epic journey too - to a place they’ve never been to before. It is this epic initial migration and the movements of juveniles in their first few years, about which we know relatively little and until recently have had little chance to learn more about. Tagging and tracking Technology now enables us to discover and learn more about ospreys than ever before. For three seasons now, (2008, 2009 and 2011) we have satellite tagged the Loch Garten osprey chicks, allowing us to track their movements and revealing a fascinating insight into their lives, including the highs and lows as they make their first journey south. Some of them stumble, some of them take wrong turns, and some of them fall. Whatever happens, we are learning things about ospreys, and we wait with baited breath for each update! What we need We hope that our breeding pair, EJ and Odin, will hatch another successful brood on their return to Loch Garten in spring 2012. Should all go well, we would like to tag two of the young so that we can follow their progress. The tagging of next year’s chicks is dependent on us raising £6,600 to cover the costs of satellite tags and the initial on-going data download costs. Can you consider helping us? If you have been fascinated by following the fortunes of tagged ospreys and would like to help us do it all again and to continue to build on the knowledge gained so far, you can make a donation via this page. If we are lucky enough to raise more than the amount required for the continuation of this project, we will allocate that money to other osprey and general conservation work at Abernethy/Loch Garten. Why we need it The satellite tracking project will help us find out more about the science of the birds, such as; - Where exactly do ospreys winter? - What distance do they cover on migration? - Under what circumstances do sea crossings occur, do birds specifically avoid them? - Do birds fly over mountain ranges? - Where and for how long do migrating ospreys make stopovers? - Do birds that cross the Sahara, make extended stopovers to recover? - Are there regular and therefore important places for stopovers? - Does juvenile migration differ from that of adults? - Do birds follow geographical features, like rivers? - How does weather affect migration? - Do males & females winter in the same region/location? - Are the same migration routes used by the same birds repeatedly? - Do juveniles wander widely looking for suitable wintering grounds, and do they return to those same locations each winter?
Currently you can view our ospreys on their journey here, and follow the drama through the Loch Garten Osprey blog. We hope you enjoy following the progress of this year’s juveniles , Tore and Bynack, as they find their way south to Africa. Check out the whereabouts too, of Rothes, a two-year old female osprey from Loch Garten’s 2009 brood.
Abernethy nature reserve
Loch Garten lies within Abernethy nature reserve, which is home to more than 4,500 species making it the most bio-diverse RSPB site in the UK, and rates as one of the most important and heavily designated conservation sites on the planet! Abernethy is not only a beautiful Caledonian pine forest with a stunning variety of habitats, it is an inspiring place to visit.
If you would like to give regularly, why not help us secure the future of our breathtaking Abernethy reserve (and the Loch Garten ospreys within it) by joining the Friends of Abernethy? From as little as £3 a month you can help safeguard the future of this national treasure. Click here for more details.
