BIRDCAM.IT

A wee bit of further news on Caledonia's demise.....and a cute coot.
8 hours ago by richard thaxton

I've heard from Roberto in Seville and he tells me that Caledonia was found in the cloisters of the convent of San Clemente in Seville city, close to the channel of the Guadalquivir river where she regularly used to hunt for fish. It would appear that under foggy conditions, she collided with a tension cable of the lighting rod of the convent. However, we await the results of the post-mortem to confirm the ultimate cause of death.

The location where Caledonia was found is as shown below.

You'd better sit down...........
1 day ago by richard thaxton

There's no easy way to say this.....we've now lost Oighrig........

We had a wee bit of cause for concern when last week’s tracking data was downloaded. It appeared that Oighrig had not moved in two days (9 and 10 January). However, trying to remain positive, this could have been because he "just happened" to be static at roost at the very same times over those couple of days, when his signal was picked up by satellite. After all, much wildlife exhibit creature of habit-type behaviour - leaving and arriving back to roost to a set pattern.

However, having held our breath, this week’s data confirms that his tracker has not moved from the final location recorded last week. This location is in an area 10 km E of Toubakouta between the small towns of Simon Diene and Keur Mama Lamine, Senegal, which is a heavily cultivated area. We cannot know for sure whether Oighrig is indeed dead or whether the tracker has fallen off. We do know, we can tell, that the tracker is working properly.

As mentioned in the last blog, Oighrig has visited this area on a number of occasions but usually returned to the Saloum River Delta. A brief search of the internet, highlights the high population of ospreys in this area with one quote of “ we saw ospreys at every bend of the river”. Young ospreys will not doubt come into conflict, for the prime fishing spots, with older and wiser birds and perhaps this is why Oighrig moved inland and where he faced other hazards of not enough fish and man. We will probably never know.