We still have no data being received by the satellite from Blue 44’s transmitter alas, but we must remain hopefully that he is alive and well. We must remember that a high percentage ( by some estimates up to 60% or more ) of young ospreys do not make it through their first couple of years, with all the hazards  of first migration and so on.

We sincerely hope that Blue 44 is one of the lucky ones and has managed to avoid the pitfalls such as bad weather, power-lines, shooters, entanglement and starvation. It is highly unlikely that his satellite transmitter has lessened his odds in any way, and even if it is now defunct in terms of data transfer,  it will not be impeding him in his natural behaviour.

Our second Osprey chick Blue YD is still doing really well in Senegal. Over the Christmas period he remained in his favourite area of the Senegal river, but on the 30th of December  he headed for the coast again. In an amazing two hours, he covered the 160 km or so to the coast, and then cruised down to a southern most point near his previous visit on  the 15th November.

Over the New year Blue YD has been fishing the sea coast, roosting at night in the dunes, and on the 2nd January he was back at the large salt-water lagoon near Gbar again. This seems to be becoming a pattern with this bird- a couple of weeks on the river, followed by a few days at the seaside!

Unfortunately I am having some trouble in uploading photographs to the blog today, but will try to post some more illustrations tomorrow .

Happy New Year!

Ranger Emma