Pity the young ospreys whose folks leave him to fend for himself before summer’s out
The sound of silence continues except for the twittering swallows and the melodic martins... and one rather surprising voice in midAugust – that of a lone willow warbler.
And there was no question; the sweet and gentle cadence down the scale, is unmistakable. On this occasion it was muted, a whispered, discreet little reminder of a song that had been so dominant in this and just about every other airt I visited, during this year’s spring and early summer.
With the year’s task of producing a new generation of willow warblers now fulfilled and a mute period called for whilst feather renewal is the order of the day, perhaps he has jumped the gun prior to beginning preparations for his departure to his African winter home. Unlike other migrants, over the course of his sojourn there he will go through another much more prolonged moult over the winter months.
Whether this lone vocalist has come through the moult earlier than most and was thus letting the world know that he now has a pristine new coat of feathers I don’t know. Perhaps it was just a feelgood moment?
But I haven’t heard him again. Perhaps that single, murmured phase was hinting at an earlier than usual departure, for instinct may already be influencing him to prepare for the mammoth journey.
Some birds have already departed these shores. Adult cuckoos abandoned their offspring to the care of their unwitting foster parents a week or two ago, to begin their southward migration before August was even on the calendar. Town streets may fall silent in the next few days as the screaming swifts up sticks and follow the cuckoos south.
Yet this year’s crop of young ospreys is only just discovering the joys of flight, utterly unaware that they too will soon be drawn to join the exodus. What they don’t yet understand is that their parents, thus far utterly devoted to their welfare, will, before the month is out, suddenly desert them and take off for Africa too, leaving them to fend for themselves.
It must be a rude awakening for young ospreys. They will eventually, instinctively, follow their parents but first they must properly hone the fishing skills by which they must survive during a forthcoming journey of some 3000 miles. It is only a few short weeks since they found themselves unceremoniously taken from their treetop eyries by humans, plunged into sacks, lowered to the ground, weighed, ringed and tagged before being returned aloft. This procedure is routinely employed these days as a means of learning more about the lives of ospreys.
In recent years, many young ospreys have also been fitted with GPS tags so that they can be monitored throughout their journeys south. As anyone who has travelled to America will know, ospreys are endemic there. Indeed, in some parts they are extremely common and I’ve seen eyries built upon man-made structures, such as bridges, in Florida.
North American birds, as