Hi folks! Well, it’s that time of year again when we wave goodbye to the Ospreys. I saw what I think might’ve been my last of the season on the 14th of September, fishing over the Ythan. As always, I feel mildly bereft when they finally vanish from our skies. It feels like the end of a really good concert, when the lights switch back on, people start packing up their gear and the audience leaves. There’s a sort of stillness on the estuary that follows their departure. I always find myself wondering where they are now, as they embark on their migration to west Africa, and whether they made it across the Irish Sea, the Bay of Biscay or the Straits of Gibraltar. It’s such a perilous journey.

But let’s rewind a little bit before I get too sentimental.

On a recent patrol in mid August, I had one of those ‘wow’ moments. I clocked eight ospreys fishing on the estuary in the space of twenty minutes. Eight birds! It was probably one or two father ospreys out with the newly fledged young, giving them some last-minute flying lessons and teaching them how to hunt before their massive journey south. By this point, the mothers have already set off back to the west coast of Africa, they’ve done their share and leave dad in charge of the fishing boot camp.

The estuary was buzzing with activity, and it’s no surprise really. Ospreys don’t just nest locally – they fly from further afield to fish here. The Ythan is like an all-you-can-eat buffet for them, with flounders, sea trout, among many other species of tasty fish. Last week, Cat captured an amazing photo of one with a hefty sea trout, big enough to feed a small family! Check out last week’s blog, Blow wind blow, to see the photos.

Our brilliant local photographer, Ron Macdonald, has supplemented this week’s blog with excellent photos of two ospreys: one which caught a flounder right opposite the Tin Hut (last year), and of another younger two-year-old ‘teenager’ individual . These pictures perfectly illustrate the agility and supreme hunting technique of these master fishers. And here’s the really exciting part, earlier this year, the bird pictured below, is a colour-ringed individual that was ringed by Ewan from the Grampian Ringing Group, at a local nest back in July 2023. The bird was part of a brood of three. This was the first sighting of this particular individual anywhere this year. One of its siblings, Blue 253, was seen all the way down in Senegal in January 2024. Not bad going for a couple of teenagers?!

Ospreys favour nests that are high up, preferably on a flat-topped Scots Pine or even large dead trees. But when it comes to dinner time, they’re happy to travel far and wide. The Ythan, with its plentiful fish is therefore an ideal hunting ground. When the tide’s just right, often at its lowest (when fish become trapped in pools), there’s no better place to see them dive, talons-first, into the water. It’s breath-taking watching them dive every time. I still sometimes have to pinch myself, to remember not to take it for granted, because not that long ago, there weren’t any ospreys here at all.

They were extinct in England by 1847 and in Scotland by 1916, thanks largely to egg-collecting, skin-hunting and a whole heap of misinformation and persecution. Even their nest trees were chopped down in places. But in 1954, a pair of Scandinavian birds (probably Norwegian or Swedish) stopped over at Loch Garten. And that’s where the incredible comeback began.

The RSPB and later, legendry conservationist and rewilder, Roy Dennis, went to extraordinary lengths to protect those first few nests. We’re talking 24/7 surveillance, barbed wire around the tree trunk – all the works! They knew how valuable and vulnerable those first eggs were.

Fast forward 70 years, from those first arrivals, and we now have nearly 350 breeding pairs in the UK. Most of them are in Scotland, but thanks to a reintroduction project at Rutland Water in 1996 (also spearheaded by Roy Dennis), they’re gradually spreading across Britain. The Ospreys which are now nesting in England and Wales have been helped along by the likes of the National Trust, RSPB, Woodland Trust, NatureScot, and of course, the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation. It’s been a massive team effort and one of our greatest, historical, conservation success stories. The Rutland Ospreys | Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust project, has just celebrated its 300^th successfully fledged chick this year! Huge congratulations to the team. What an incredible conservation milestone.

Still, 350 pairs isn’t that many. To put it into perspective, we’ve got more Golden Eagles in Scotland, just over 500 pairs. That’s why, even now, I try to remember just how special it is to see ospreys soaring over the Ythan. With a wingspan of 1.5 metres and those angled wings with dark patches at the wrist, they cut a very distinctive shape in the sky. At a distant first glance, they might look a bit like a large gull such as a Great Black-backed, but once you’ve seen one swoop for a fish, you’ll never mistake them again. This video below is footage I was lucky enough to film of Ospreys fishing in the Cairngorms and attending a nest in Highland Perthshire (with Mousehole Films).

…and that brings me back to the end of the season.

They have to leave. They don’t have a choice. Being obligate fish-eaters, they can’t risk staying in northern Europe through winter, where the risk of rivers and lochs freezing over is too high. In such extreme circumstances, fishing becomes impossible. So off they go, heading for the west coast of Africa, thousands of miles over sea and deserts, facing storms, exhaustion, and all manner of dangers along the way.

But why do they bother with this enormous commute back to northern Europe every year? Wouldn’t it be easier to just stay in the subtropics? The answer’s really simple – daylight. Our summers offer more hours of fishing time. Scotland has significantly more summer daylight hours than Senegal (where a lot of our Ospreys migrate to) because of its higher latitude. While Senegal experiences roughly 12 to 13 hours of daylight in the summer months, Scotland can have 16 to 18 hours of daylight. For a bird that only eats fish and needs to feed its young, more daylight means more food. So they make the trade: raise the chicks up here during the long summer days, then escape the cold and the prospect of starvation when winter hits.

And so, the skies are a little quieter now. The epic fishing dives have ceased. The last osprey has probably left the Ythan, and I miss them already. But what a privilege it’s been, to watch them teach their young, to see them hunt, to hear of locally ringed birds coming back to the area, and to witness the beginnings and ends of their migrations each year. These birds are nothing short of a flying miracle.

See you next March, Fish Hawks!