WILDLIFE enthusiasts will be able to track online the progress of osprey chicks when they begin a 3000-mile trip to West Africa.
The two chicks, a female named Tore and a male named Bynack, hatched this spring at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ (RSPB) Loch Garten Osprey Centre.
They have been fitted with satellite tags which will transmit data so that an online audience can follow the movements of the birds over the next few years.
The osprey is sometimes known as the sea hawk or fish eagle due to their diet which consists exclusively of fish. Once widespread, ospreys became extinct in Scotland in 1916.
In 1954, a pair nested at Loch Garten and since 1959, the birds have arrived every year, raising more than 80 young.
More than two million people have visited RSPB Scotland’s Loch Garten Osprey Centre over the last 50 years – 36,000 last year.
Site manager at the Centre, Richard Thaxton, said: “Tore and Bynack need to be in tip-top condition to ensure that they survive the huge journey to West Africa at the end of August.
“We know from tracking other ospreys the first year can be the most dangerous. These tags will not only help us understand more about the migratory movements of ospreys, but allows others to follow their adventures.”
This is the third time that the Loch Garten osprey chicks have been fitted with satellite tags. Two chicks – Rothes and Mallachie – were tagged back in 2009. Rothes has been tracked as currently being in Morocco but contact was lost with Mallachie.
Meanwhile, the Tweed Valley Osprey Project began ringing fledgling chicks yesterday, allowing their progress to be tracked in the future.
The ringing is part of the project being run in partnership by the Forestry Commission Scotland, RSPB and private estate Kailzie Gardens. The project puts up nesting platforms to encourage ospreys to nest within the Borders, with nine successful breeding pairs of birds in the area.
The two centres – Glencress Forest and Kailzie Gardens – show CCTV footage from the nest sites from when the birds arrive back in the spring, right through to the chicks fledgling.
Tweed Valley Osprey Project officer and manager of the two centres, Diane Bennett, said: “We can monitor the distribution of how the birds are dispersing, how the population is spreading and where the birds are successfully making their migration journeys down to Africa.”
The ospreys can be tracked at www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/tracking/ lochgartenospreys/
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