The Flight of Bird U03 (2001)

Osprey U03 was thought to be a female. She came from a long established (1987) successful pair breeding in Morayshire and was the older of two chicks. Chick T11 in 2000 was also from this nest. It was translocated to Rutland Water on 15 July 2001 and released on 31 July. Just before release this bird weighed 1670g and had a winglength of 486mm. BTO ring number 1385677.

U03 was the dominant bird in its pen before release and the second bird to take to the air. It is carrying a battery-powered radio transmitter.

Unfortunately the 5 locations in or near Normandy are not accurate ones, and the bird's movements were probably not as indicated by the red lines on the map. The mean distance of the five locations from Rutland Water is 370km.

Five and a half days later, U03 was over 1000km further south and flying SE towards a flooded river vallley, the Embalse de Contreras. The countryside here is described in a guidebook as a "startling craggy landscape, with deep gorges of extraordinary character". This location is very similar to the reservoirs used by bird S06 during the previous two winters. See S06's page for details and pictures.

It seems that U03 probably crossed the Mediterranean at a relatively eastern position, leading it to keep to the east of the Atlas mountains and to begin an easterly (i.e long!) crossing of the Sahara desert. Between 8 and 14 September it travelled nearly 1000km across apparently inhospitable terrain, finally coming to rest in a totally feartueless area of the Sahara. Subsequent transmissions, many of them accurate, hcontinued from the same location through the winter and into the spring of 2002.

There is a small possibility that the radio came off the bird's back but the likelihood of this is small. We must conclude that U03 most probably perished in this unhospitable desert.