June 5th, 2011 was a very special day for a lot of people at the Dyfi Osprey Project. It was also a special day for osprey recovery in Wales. For the first time in over 400 years in the Dyfi valley, mid Wales, this happened:
Einion's first struggle in life was to crawl out of his egg shell - June 5th, 2011
By the morning of June 5th last year, we had begun to wonder whether any of Nora and Monty's three eggs were going to hatch, they were so late. With a much more basic camera system than we have this year, we had been zooming in and out for days looking for the first signs of life coming from the three eggs. When it happened though, there was no mistaking what was going on. The visitor centre was full all day - it was a Sunday. News spread quickly and by 3.35pm grown men (and women) were seen crying, watching the two live screens. The tiny visitor centre was physically shaking and people that had never met before were embracing. Einion had hatched.
Wildlife watching moments like this are very rare and special, and will be indelibly imprinted on the minds of many of us that were there that day. I suppose the only emotional comparison would be to realise, with your family all around you, that your six numbers have come up and you have just won the lottery - only better.
From very early on it was obvious that this little bird was a bit different. He was very independent with an "I can look after myself" attitude. By six weeks old, he weighed a healthy 1470g and had a wing span of 338mm when on July 19th our friend Roy Dennis came down from Scotland to ring and tag him.
Roy places a blue 'Darvic' ring on Einion's right leg
Roy and Tony Cross (Welsh Kite Trust) also checked Einion for general signs of health - he was in fantastic condition with none of the telltale signs of stunted growth or any other weakness. He had been fed and looked after well by two parents that had never raised young before.
Healthy tail feather growth showing no signs of 'fault-lines'
Aged seven weeks and three days, Einion fledged the nest and a young osprey flew over the Dyfi River for the first time in centuries. It was a Wright brothers moment - the short flight duration was far outweighed by the significance of it.
On the morning of August 31st at 09:05, Einion flew off his Dyfi nest for the last time and he was gone. My colleague Alwyn and I had been watching him eat a good-sized mullet shortly after 07:00 that day, and we kind of knew that Einion was preparing himself for the greatest journey of his short life to date. By the time we closed the visitor centre that day, Einion was in north Devon and by night fall he was roosting for the night just to the west of Plymouth!
The first satellite tagged Welsh osprey had started his southerly migration. The following day he was in France and by day three he was on the north Spanish border - rather than hug the coast of France he had flown 350 miles straight over the Bay of Biscay, which took him 13 hours to complete. A week after leaving his Dyfi nest, Einion was in Africa, where he stopped off for a few weeks near Casablanca, Morocco.
Exactly four weeks after leaving Wales, Einion had made it safely to Senegal, and he's still there. He initially settled in Somone Lagoon Reserve just to the south of Dakar, where incredibly, Roy and the BBC Autumnwatch team caught up with him in early November.
By mid February he was moving again and flew north to a coastal area just south of St Louis, where he remains to this day. During his first year of life, Einion has already taught us much about osprey behaviour and migration. Will he stay where he is? Time will tell, but he's been there almost four months now, having certainly secured good fishing spots and feeding and roosting perches.
A year in the life of a young Welsh osprey
As Einion's parents are protecting and nurturing his new brothers/sisters 3,000 miles away in cool and rainy Wales, you can somehow imagine Einion sat on a favourite perch somewhere with a red mullet in his talons, peering over a holiday-brochure blue sea. Just as we have seen many two year old blue ringed ospreys pass over the Dyfi nest during the last few weeks, we all hope that as he approaches his second birthday, Einion will be yet another of those birds in 2013. To many of us though, Einion is not 'just another bird'.
Happy Birthday - Penblwydd Hapus Einion
Andy Rouse's stunning image of Einion just before he started his epic journey to Africa in August 2011. © Andy Rouse
