Ospreys

I’m going to tell you about ospreys.

Ospreys are a bird of prey that eat fish. There are ospreys in Scotland, England and Wales and they migrate to West Africa for the winter. We’ve seen ospreys in Wales at Dyfi Osprey Project and in England at Rutland Water.

My favourite ospreys were Monty and Telyn at Dyfi Osprey Project. We like to watch them on a web cam.

Last year we saw one of their eggs hatching on the web cam. We also watched the chicks learning to fly. We watched the chicks having their rings put on. They put rings on their legs so they can know which one’s which and it helps us carry on learning about ospreys so we can look after them. Monty migrated in 2019 but he didn’t come back in 2020. Something might have happened to him but nobody knows what. Instead, a new osprey called Idris came and took Monty’s place. So far Telyn has laid two eggs.

Ospreys became extinct in Britain in 1916. They became extinct because people shot them and stole their eggs and because people took away the places they live in. They started to come back to Scotland in the 1950s. People worked hard to look after them. In the 1990s some osprey chicks were moved from Scotland to Rutland Water in England and now there are ospreys breeding there too. All the female ospreys at Dyfi Osprey Project came from Rutland Water. They came to Dyfi Osprey Project by themselves.

There are still lots of problems for ospreys. Some types of litter are especially bad for ospreys. Baler twine, which is a type of string that farmers use, is not good for ospreys because some ospreys use it for their nests and get tangled up in it. Ospreys can die by getting caught up in fishing nets and fishing lines or they can die from eating fishing line or fishing hooks. When chemicals end up in the wild, they can build up in the food chain. The fish will eat the chemicals, the osprey will eat the fish, then the osprey can get too many chemicals in its body from eating lots of fish and will die. Some chemicals make their eggshells too thin. Some people still steal their eggs even though it’s illegal. Shooting is still a problem for ospreys. Sometimes ospreys get shot in Britain and sometimes they get shot in Spain or other European countries. In some countries ospreys have to go through, people hunt migrating birds even when it’s illegal. It’s hard to protect migrating birds because they migrate through lots of countries so they’ve got to be protected everywhere. People in lots of countries need to work together to look after them.

I think people should protect ospreys because they’ve been extinct in Britain and I don’t want that to happen again. I like everything about ospreys and I like being able to watch them.

Books About Ospreys

I think Ozzie’s Migration and Ozzie’s Return are good books because they tell you what happens when ospreys migrate.

We bought Ozzie’s Migration and Ozzie’s Return at Rutland Water. We met Ken Davies who wrote the books and he said he’d been all the way to Africa to look for the ospreys there. I would like to do that one day too.