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Cousteau, the young osprey from the reintroduction project in the Basque Country that left the Urdaibai Reserve on 10 September, takes a month on a tributary of the Casamance River, about 50 km North of the city of Ziguinchor, the capital of this Senegalese region. It seems to have found a safe place to fish at will and by this time he will have recovered the weight lost during migration.
Surely he will be familiar with the environment, becoming effective against other ospreys with which he will have to share this arm of the river, also surrounded by herons, pelicans, cormorants and humans, all of them competing for similar resources. In this area Cousteau is likely to catch fish of the Mugilidae family (Mullets, so abundant also in the estuaries of the Bay of Biscay), probably Mugil bananensis, a common species in open mangroves of Senegambia. Satellite signals indicate that Cousteau usually sleeps in large trees a short distance from the shore, a safe place to prevent attacks by jackals and hyenas, common predators in Casamance.
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