The young female osprey Pinky (PY1) has not resumed her full migration journey since finding her way to the Rio Huebra in the northwest of Spain close to the border of Portugal, writes Diane Bennett, Tweed Valley Osprey Project Officer.

After spending a couple of days along the river, hunting and building her strength, she began to widen her exploration of the area and on September 8 she made a circular tour of 36km before returning to the familiar river.

The next day she began to enjoy the Rio Aqueda river system and spent the night close to the dam over the river.

On September 9 and 10 Pinky moved on to the next river, the Rio Yeltes, a beautiful area and a shallow river system which looks to be good for fishing for a young hungry osprey that is still honing her skills.

Considering just a few weeks ago she was relying solely on her parents to find fish for her, independence has certainly been a steep learning curve. But at least she has discovered an area of Spain that is rich in riverine habitat.

On September 12 Pinky pushed on further south, she crossed over the large lake called Borbollon but didn’t stop and continued further south to Coria and the Rio Alagon.

She reached the river and made a sharp easterly turn over towards the town on the south of the river, where she once again crossed over a really busy wide road at a dangerously low height.

She then made an abrupt about turn and headed back over to the safety of the river.

She is doing well, is in good surroundings and finding many river systems to exploit on her journey through Spain, not surprising that she doesn’t appear to be in much of a hurry.

She has flown much further south than her brother, Perky, even though she left a week later than him to start her migration.

Meanwhile, Perky, having discovered the Lac de Joux in Switzerland last week, is treating the whole migration thing like a vacation.

He is still at the lake, where he has made north shore his home and takes trips along the shore and occasional forays over to the other side back to rest in a tree.

No need to hurry for this laid back Tweed Valley chap! What young osprey wants to travel on further south when they have discovered paradise?

As day length progressively shortens and as weather temperatures turn down a notch, presumably this will drive him to move further southwards.

There is still no further data from FK8, but due to the way the data stopped so abruptly, we hope that she is ok and has made it to Portugal to her winter quarters.

We are very grateful to Valerie Webber who has organised a search party for FK8 at her known roost sites near to the Barragem de Morgavel in Portugal.

Hopefully she will be spotted there, safe and well but maybe her tracking device has dropped off.