Arrival of Osprey chicks for the recovery project of this predatory specie in Urdaibai

Thirteen Osprey chicks have been received in Urdaibai as part of the recovery project that Aranzadi Society of Science carries out since 2013 in relation to this specie. These last thirteen individuals are a part of the 60 the Scottish Government was committed to donate in five years time (2013-2017), through a cooperation agreement with the Provincial Government of Bizkaia. As in the previous two years, the chicks also came from nests located in Moray and in the Scottish Highlands, country that houses around 300 breeding couples, what allows the authorities to donate individuals without endangering the population.

Like in previous years, the extraction of the Osprey chicks from their nests and their transport to Urdaibai has been an extremely delicate operation that has needed an exhaustive planning and the participation of highly qualified staff. Thus, the detailed knowledge of the development degree of the chicks and their amount in each nest has had a vital importance in order to synchronize and coordinate the extraction and transport in few days.

During the days considered suitable, various groups of climbers, directed and coordinated by the well-known naturalists Roy Dennis, climbed to the top of the selected nests and removed one chick from each one. Afterwards, the removed individuals were taken to the head office of the Highland Foundation for Wildlife one by one, until reaching the number of permitted number of individuals established by the Scottish license, thirteen for the year 2015.

There, they were checked by the veterinary service and they were feed periodically until they were transported to Aberdeen, from where they were sent to Madrid via London. During a big part of the trip, the Ospreys were assisted by a collaborating technician form Urdaibai Bird Center, who had travelled to Scotland to help in the coordination of the operation and to feed the chicks before departing from Aberdeen and at their arrival at Barajas airport. A van of the Provincial Government of Bizkaia was in charge of taking the chicks from Madrid to Urdaibai, completing almost 24 hours of travel. Once there, and after taking the morphological measures and feather samples to sex them afterwards, the chicks were introduced into artificial nests. There, they will be raised by the technicians of the Urdaibai Bird Center until they are fully developed and they abandon the nest, around the beginning of august.

Once they are released, the technician of the UBC will continue feeding them by putting fishes in certain points of the wetland where the inexperienced Ospreys will go punctually, as they should do in the wild, until they can be independent and fly to their wintering areas, located in sub-Saharan Africa, in countries around the Gulf of Guinea. The individuals managing to avert the numerous dangers during the migration and being efficient in fishing will survive to return, look for a partner and establish in a territory that enables their reproduction in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve. This is the main objective of the recovery project of this specie.

Last spring the return of the first individual, called "Jaun Zuria", happened. It is a male took from Scotland to Urdaibai in the 2013 and it has been wandering around for the last two months, hoping to find a young female. In this sense, the staff of the Urdaibai Bird Center and Aranzadi Society of Science, is very hopeful that the expected reproduction of this spectacular and emblematic predator will be a reality in few years. It would be a really positive event for the ecotourism and the environmental education.