A four-year-old osprey has been spotted some 4,000 miles away from where it hatched at a south Lakes nature reserve.
The male bird of prey, which hatched at Foulshaw Moss Nature Reserve near Witherslack, Kendal, was spotted last week at Tanji Bird Reserve in The Gambia by Fansu Bojang, a bird guide.
The bird, known as Blue V8 because of his tag, is one of two chicks that successfully fledged from Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s nature reserve in 2016.
Paul Waterhouse, reserves officer at Cumbria Wildlife Trust said: “This is very exciting news indeed and we are very grateful to Fansu for letting us know about it.
“We know that the osprey chicks which hatch in Cumbria face a long and arduous migration to West Africa, when they are about five months old, and sadly as many as 60-70 per cent don’t survive this first journey.
“We know their survival chances are very slim so we’re really pleased to hear that Blue V8 is thriving four years on!”
Osprey chicks are tagged at around three months old.
Paul said: “These leg tags enable us to identify the birds individually, keep tracks of their movements and understand their life history, as with this sighting of Blue V8.
“They are fitted with metal BTO rings, as part of the national bird ringing scheme and also a plastic colour ring, which allows individual birds to be identified in the field using a telescope or telephoto camera.”
This is the second Foulshaw Moss chick to be recorded in the Gambia: 5N (2018) was recorded by Chris Wood in the winter of 2019 at Gunjur quarry, not all that far away from this sighting.
Blue V8 has returned to the UK at least once since his first migration as he was photographed in 2019 at Leighton Moss.
Osprey pair Blue 35 (female) and White YW (male) started nesting at Foulshaw Moss Nature Reserve in 2014.
Since then they have successfully raised 18 chicks including Blue V8 – eight males and 10 females.
Paul and his colleagues hope that the breeding pair will return again this year (usually in late March/early April).
