Birds have it all mapped out

Birds have inner ‘sat-nav’ systems that read the Earth’s magnetic field and guide them on epic migratory flights.

However, sometimes a more straightforward approach comes into play for journeying across landscapes to distant nesting grounds.

Watching an osprey soar effortlessly high over a busy stretch of the M1 recently, it was obvious the bird was using the path of the meandering motorway rather than relying on any inbuilt compass, even taking a loop around one busy junction to correct its course.

Over the past few weeks, scores of ospreys have been heading to lakeside eyries to continue one of the most outstanding conservation success stories of our age. A hundred years ago, these handsome fish-eating hawks had vanished from the British countryside, wiped out by bird collectors and nest robbers.

Since a single pair returned to Scotland’s Loch Garten in the mid-1950s, conservationists have protected and nurtured the birds so that more than 240 pairs now nest in Scotland and as far south as Rutland Water and Dorset’s Poole Harbour.

Monitoring ospreys by using satellite trackers and fitting identifiable colour rings have helped chart the birds as they travel to and from their nesting areas and winter quarters, heading as far south as the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

The Roy Dennis Foundation, which has been at the heart of efforts to reintroduce the osprey, as well as coordinating the colour ringing project, recently detailed one of the most incredible bird journeys ever recorded.

A young female osprey, fitted with a blue colour ring with the code number KW0 by the Clyde Ringing Group in Scotland last June, was seen at an irrigation pool in the north of Barbados in March this year.

The youngster had clocked up 4,124 air miles. Although Scandinavian ospreys can migrate as far as South Africa, what makes KW0’S efforts so incredible is that she had to fly across a huge expanse of open ocean.

It seems sometimes even natural sat-navs go wrong…