Ospreys tracked on flight south

Ospreys' flight from Pego tracked to African desert – including a wrong turning to Toulouse

Four ospreys bred in the marshes take to the skies to find a winter home

FINDING love in the Albufera wetlands and setting up home in the Sahara desert after touring the Mar Menor – plenty of adventures await those who manage to escape from Pego.

At least, that's what the four ospreys bred in the marshes on the Marina Alta-La Safor border have been getting up to since they fled the nest.

They were the first of their species to be reintroduced into the Marjal after a 38-year absence as part of a controlled breeding programme to increase their population.

Now, the Western Ospreys, otherwise known as the Pandion Haliaetus, are on the migration path seeking warmer climates than those offered by the Mediterranean over the next few months, but it is hoped they will return to Pego in the spring.

Lulú and her brother Quillo apparently had a hard time when their feeding station became infested by wasps, and that was enough for Quillo to decide he was fed up with Pego and was going to spread his wings.

He has now been traced to the Sahara desert.

Luiji, the most intrepid of the feathered team, has passed the Sahara and is now in the central Sahel desert after travelling 300 kilometres a day – and getting horribly lost en route.

His sat nav let him down and sent him north to Toulouse in

August, but he eventually executed a u-turn and set off for Africa.

Marina, who was the first to have a crack at flying, has taken a tour of eastern Spain for old times' sake – she has been tracked to the swamps in Beniarrés, Bellús and Sitjar near Onda, to Albacete and to the Mar Menor – but she has a boyfriend in the Albufera, which stretches along the Valenciaprovince

coast from Xeraco to the city, so she is expected to be back. Western Ospreys normally return to the place they were born, or where they took their first flight if this is different – the Marjal, in this case, since they were born in incubators – within their first two years of life to reproduce.

In the case of home-loving Lulú, however, she has opted to stay put, but is expected to start exploring the world once she grows a bit more and gains strength, according to ornithology expert Miguel Ferrer of the Migres Foundation, which organised the breeding.

Sr Ferrer says to ensure the Marjal is fully repopulated with Western Ospreys, at least 20 a year will need to be bred there, meaning all hopes are pinned on the backpackers' return.