The adults at the Urdaibai Biosphere are Landa and Roy, named after Roy Dennis who helped with the translocation of the Ospreys from Scotland to the region. This year started so well – three eggs and everyone so hopeful that the project would be well and underway. Sadly, that is not the case.
This nest was the one where the little Albino chick hatched and, sadly, died.
Yesterday, one of the older chicks died but the other was still alive.
Today the other chick has died. It is unclear what the cause is but I hope that they will conduct a post mortem.
If the chicks are small like the little albino, the mother will move the body about 100 m from the nest. These are older chicks and their corpses will have to moved off the nest by experienced staff. This is such a sad ending to what promised to be a wonderful celebration for this translocation project.
I went to the UK as a Commonwealth Scholar in 1990 and received my PhD from the University of Leicester in 1993. After three decades of university teaching, I retired to devote my time to the study of raptor behaviour. I am particularly interested in Ospreys and am working on a long term project on third hatch survival and siblicide in these raptors. My blog is a result of a fascination with my local wildlife and the desire to encourage others to love and care for birds! I live on the Canadian Prairies and prior to the pandemic travelled a lot. I am questioning the use of aviation fuel at the moment as we all strive to help our planet. My early research was in politics and art including British public statues exported to Southeast Asia and Vietnam Resistors that contributed much to Canadian ceramics. Books and articles were published on those subjects over a period of 3 decades. Now I am working on books for children so they can learn about the challenges our raptors face.
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