Manton Bay

Here is the latest diary entry from Ken, brilliantly summing up the last shift of the season. Enjoy!

Sunday September 4th, Manton Bay: Keeping up with AW(06)’s amazing progress through Southern Morocco and Western Sahara has kept me occupied for most of the morning, until suddenly I realise it’s time to leave the house and make my way to Lyndon for what is possibly my final shift of the season in the Bay. I drive comfortably and calmly through leafy lanes and sleepy villages, avoiding major routes wherever possible. My mind is still on that incredible journey being undertaken at this very moment by AW, that sturdy male I watched as a juvenile at Site B in the summer of 2006. He was known as AA(06) then, with a maroon colour ring, and I was lucky enough to be around when he took his first flight during the morning of 14th July. He had two sisters, 7T(06) and silver-ringed AA(06), both of whom flew during the next few days. Just a week or so later, 7T disappeared, and despite extensive searching over the whole area, no trace was ever found of her. The two surviving juveniles stayed around with their parents, 03(97) and 05(00), but all four had departed on migration before the end of August 2006. My next meeting with AW(06) ~ as we’ll call him from now on ~ was on the evening of May 15th 2009, when I was reporting for night-duty at the cottage on the Hambleton road. As I drove in I noticed an Osprey sitting on the T-perch on the new lagoon (Lagoon 4), but at that stage I had no idea which one it was. As I left the car and started transferring my gear into the vehicle Lucy and I were going to use for our night-watch at Site B, I noticed another Osprey in the dead tree in the creek behind the cottage. I did manage to identify this one ~ it was 32(05), a four year old which had been around for a while. So who was the one on Lagoon 4? We were at a loss ~ but then John arrived. He had seen the new bird earlier on, but had not given it much attention as he was sure it would be one of the ‘regulars’. But then he looked more closely ~ no colour ring, metal ring on left leg, strangely familiar feather markings…….We left him preparing to go through his folders of flight photographs to find a match. In the fading light at Site B, and again in the early morning, we saw two intruding Ospreys, one of which could possibly have been the new arrival. During the following day, the exciting news arrived that it was in fact AW(06), minus his maroon colour ring, but with identical underwing feather markings to the bird first photographed in 2006, and now back again in 2009! The following year, 2010, he settled with a female at Site O, and returned there again in 2011, breeding successfully both times! And now, with a new designation and a newly fitted satellite transmitter, he is somewhere in Western Sahara, and sending us fantastic information every day. Long may it continue!

I’m immersed in all these thoughts as I arrive at Lyndon ~ a strangely quiet Lyndon, with hardly a car in the car-park and very few people in the Visitor Centre. Tim is there, of course, in front of his computer screen, studying the incoming data regarding AW’s latest position and migration, which is proceeding at an incredible pace ~ he is covering vast distances each day, barely pausing to rest and eat. He will soon be in the unforgiving desert country of Mauritania……..and only eight days ago, he was still here. A few of us crowd around as Tim goes over his route again ~ this jet-setting Osprey has really hit the hot-spots…..Paris, Madrid, Malaga and Marbella, then over into Morocco, following the northern side of the Atlas Mountains, then Marrakech, and a river valley through into Western Sahara. Another thought strikes us: his female is still here in Rutland, feeding one of the juveniles at the nest! This is not what the books say should happen!

I’d almost forgotten! I’m here for a shift down in Wader Scrape hide. Barrie and I collect the kit and make our way down, where, incredibly, we find the hide completely empty, all flaps closed, no-one in sight. There are Ospreys here! 5R sits on his perch, with the female and one juvenile (32(11)) still present. It’s great to see them ~ even though it’s slightly unreal somehow…….5R’s younger brother is in Western Sahara, all the other Ospreys, apart from the three here and the two at Site O, have left, and there are no visitors! A very strange atmosphere pervades the Bay, the hide…..and us. We don’t speak much. It’s all very ‘end of season’……..

David Gessner in ‘Soaring with Fidel’ frequently quotes from the 19th Century American poet Walt Whitman, and in one section he refers to a line which seems so right for today:

‘……you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart……’

All the birds today appear to have received the call. Clouds of House Martins and Swallows are dashing around, skittering after insects, chasing one another in intricate patterns of flight. Common Terns are high in the air, circling, calling, preparing to leave. Nervous flocks of waders ~ already part-way through their migrations from the North ~ alight momentarily on the muddy edges but then are off again, glinting in the light, turning and twisting, destined for who-knows-where before they can settle properly. Primrose Yellow Wagtails dance in the air, floppy Lapwings are buffeted by the breeze, a single Sedge Warbler climbs a reed and descends again rapidly. All of them are tense, uneasy, wary, on edge. Only the three Ospreys remain calm: 5R on his post, the female on the perch above the nest, and the one remaining juvenile hunched on the rim. Surely they’ve had the call too, but they are impassive, napping, preparing mentally and physically…….

There is an evocative single German word ~ again found in Soaring with Fidel ~ which perfectly defines Whitman’s ‘irresistible call to depart’. It is Zugunruhe, literally ‘journey unrest’, but better described by Gessner as ‘the restlessness birds feel before they migrate……..the general unease, the bristling, of a creature about to embark on a journey.’ Wildebeest in the Serengeti, Caribou in Northern Canada, even the great Whales in the oceans and the clouds of Monarch butterflies in the United States ~ Zugunruhe touches them all. We humans feel it too. Today it is almost palpable: every migratory creature in the Bay before us is sensing the approaching great journey ahead.

Judging by the almost total lack of visitors this afternoon, people have assumed the few remaining Ospreys have already gone. We are almost resigned to the first-ever visitorless shift, when the door slides open and a few come in. An Australian woman and her elderly mother are thrilled to see Ospreys, and their enthusiasm warms us up: we wax lyrical and try to counteract Zugunruhe! Another couple arrive, having just left the Burghley Horse Trials which are now in their final day. They are refreshing themselves before driving back to North Yorkshire. And so it continues…..a trickle of people on this, the final Sunday of our season. The juvenile has been holding part of a fish all afternoon, and occasionally he takes a rather desultory peck at it. 5R flies over from time to time, just checking if he still has any of it left, as if thinking ‘I’m not fishing again for you until you’ve finished that’. He is finally roused into action by the loud food-begging of both female and juvenile and lifts himself off the perch to fly over the bund. Scattering the gulls, Lapwings and Cormorants, he makes just the one dive…..and with all the skills of an accomplished parent and consummate fisherman, he emerges with a pike, which he takes back to his perch. At this point, we have no visitors at all. We train all four telescopes onto him as he eats. Their lenses peer forlornly out across the water, but with only the two of us watching. About half the pike is left when he dutifully delivers it to the juvenile on the nest, and the caterwauling ceases at last.

As the afternoon draws to a close, Vikki and Liz arrive, closely followed by Lloyd and Becky. What is this? An end-of-season gathering of Information Officers, Wardens and Co-ordinators? There is a clue: Vikki arrived carrying a big box containing a chocolate cake in the shape of a ‘cheeky monkey’. It’s her birthday, and what better way to celebrate it than with her colleagues and friends over a piece of ‘cheeky monkey’ cake while watching over the Ospreys for this last time? Michelle, Mike and Tim are on the way down too. So we leave 5R and his family eating pike, and Vikki & Co eating cheeky monkey……..

I take one last look back. 5R is back on his perch, calm, unruffled, looking good, contemplating his achievements and watching his mate and one remaining offspring. It’s nearly time for us all to go ~ for me a short journey, for them a mammoth one. Suddenly I don’t want to linger, I need to be away. Zugunruhe has kicked in. I avoid the Burghley traffic by following my beloved rural lanes, and I’m soon home. It’s over for another year. I loved it, every single second.

Oh, I’ll see you at the Party next Sunday! I might even write about it if anyone is interested in seeing what one hundred and fifty Osprey staff and volunteers do to celebrate the end of another great summer season……….