As promised, updates on news of our young satellite tracked osprey as soon as we have them. We too are on the edges of our seats waiting for each new set of data to see how our youngster is fairing.

As of 9pm last night ( Friday) she was in central Mauritania,  still following her SW or SSW trajectory. She is still flying well, at a fairly normal speed, and making good long flights.

On the 10th ( Thursday) she flew over 400km in the day, over high sand dunes and roosted for the night on top of one of them- what a strange place to imagine our Scottish bird!

On Friday she flew about 250km by 7pm, but having gone a bit of a curved route to the east before heading true south again. It looks like she was again roosting on Sand dunes.

She is now nearing the southern edge of this desert area and the more fertile eastern region. She is still 1000km from Dakar and the coast though, and some 800km from the inland river where our other young osprey  Blue YD ( 2012) is wintering. If she can keep going another day or two , she will be able to reach an area with plenty of fishing opportunities and more hospitable landscapes- fingers crossed!

More news Monday Morning hopefully.

Ranger Emma

P.S. You may notice that the interactive satellite tracking map seems to have a minor glitch in it at the moment. It is not allocating all data points to the map in correct time order, so it may occasionally appear that our bird is looping back on herself. This is not the case and is just a data error. She is in fact flying directly and determinedly in the right way! Our software boffins are trying to sort this asap, but rest assured the bird isn’t lost or disorientated.