Return of the Ospreys
Ospreys were extinct in England for nearly 200 years. Now they're back in Rutland, in a conservation success story that has attracted global attention, including from film star Leonardo DiCaprio.
The first osprey to return to Rutland Water arrived from West Africa this week.
A Rutland-born female flew in on Tuesday after a 5,000km flight. Two days later a male, known as Blue 33 (11), arrived on the nest at Manton Bay.
Blue 33, together with an un-ringed female, Maya, are Rutland’s star pair and have bred together since 2015 raising 20 chicks, so her arrival is now keenly anticipated.
In the meantime, female 25 (10), is sharing the Manton Bay nest with Blue 33.
Every moment is captured as the platform-mounted nest has a webcam and microphone for a livestream broadcast to YouTube. Not everything is going to script, however. So far, she has projectile-crapped on the back of his head (he barely flinched) and, as I write this, there has been an attempt at mating.
What the public want to know is where Maya is, so she and Blue 33 can be reunited. It’s like Rutland’s very own avian version of Love Island.
This is an extraordinary project because ospreys had been extinct in England for nearly 200 years until the Rutland Osprey Project was set up 25 years ago. Since then, more than 200 chicks have been raised.
The project has attracted worldwide acclaim, with film star Leonardo DiCaprio praising the Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust’s “amazing work” in an Instagram post to his 57 million followers.
Ospreys were persecuted to extinction in the 1800s, shot for taxidermy or their eggs taken by collectors.
In the 1950s, birds migrating to Scandinavia stopped in Scotland and began breeding, enabling a conservation project to begin there.
Now, there are around 300 breeding pairs in the UK, including at Rutland.
The ospreys’ incredible migration to West Africa recently featured on a BBC Radio 4 documentary series, Flight of the Ospreys, following birds from Loch Garten in Scotland to Guinea in West Africa, via Rutland Water.
Some birders travel to West Africa and have spotted the Rutland birds in Senegal and Gambia. I was fortunate to travel to the Gambia in 1990 – a tiny strip of a country running alongside a great river flowing into the Atlantic – and while I wasn’t there to spot ospreys, I remember clearly the rich and other worldly sound of birdsong in the mornings, as well as exotic forest sounds.
On a walk last spring to the village of Lyndon, close to the visitor centre on Rutland’s south shore, where the project is based, I saw one of these magnificent birds. It was circling high in the warming air. Even at such a height, it’s 1.5 metre wing span is awe-inspiring. You can only stop, look up and gaze in wonder.
At a time when Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles series is highlighting both the best of British nature, but also our status as one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, the story of the Rutland ospreys is cause for celebration and hope.
Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust Rutland Osprey Project
They certainly are local celebrities. Our local social media channels have been buzzing this week with news of their return to the nests at Rutland Water, especially Maya, our veteran breeder of fourteen years!