I am at present putting together a new evening talk on our birds of prey. I had already decided to include the Grey Heron in the talk as I have personally seen all sorts of fish, a large eel and even a rat being eaten by herons. I now feel vindicated in including this bird in a list of birds of prey as I have just seen the following article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/29/eaheron129.xml

web Author

I should really start with the news on Deshar - The last data point I have is from 15.00 yesterday (28th September) where we found him at an altitude of 430m above sea level, 300km east of the small island of Santa Maria, the warmest and most southern of the Azores,it is approximately 50 miles from São Miguel. The island has an area of 97.18 km² and is the third smallest of the group - let's hope he can find it. So far Deshar has flown 1470miles ,or 2365km - and the data would suggest that it has been a non-stop flight. - the next data set will be very revealing.

As for Nethy, - at 11.00 yesterday (28th) she started to move, she flew almost due south for 3 hours, covering a distance of 91km before switching course, between 14.00 and 15.00 she flew SW, only covering a distance of 15km before settling in a tree. The last data point for her was at 17.00, still in that tree in the Downton area, only 1.6km from the south coast and the English Channel.

I will be checking on the hour for the next satellite pass - believe me, as soon as I know I will report - good or bad.

Published 29 September 2008 11:34 by davidgascoigne

See: http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/l/lochgarten/blog.asp for full blog.

See: http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/tracking/lochgarte... for the osprey tracking website