Osprey with prey

Another view of the juvenile Osprey that has been feeding and resting at Milton Country Park since 5th September 2024. It is an unringed bird, so not a fledgling from the breeders at Rutland Water. It is, rather, most likely to have flown in from Scotland or Cumbria, a wild fledgling, heading to Gambia or a neighbouring country for the winter.

Usually, the adult birds tend to fly from their nesting sites right through to Africa without needing to stop over at country parks and the like. But, inexperienced juveniles, like all children, get hungry on a long journey and so this juvenile has stopped off to refuel. One person in the park reported that the juvenile had settled on their garden fence in the village briefly.

Having said that about the adults flying through, I also saw an adult at the park on the day I first saw the juvenile. More to the point, there had been reports of an adult on the Cam and possibly the same, or different bird, in nearby Chesterton and at Dernford Reservoir.

I think I missed seeing the juvenile catch a fish by minutes. When I caught up with it having hung around watching and waiting for an hour, it was eating a roach or a perch while being mobbed by corvids (magpies and jackdaws) on its usual oak perch in the park.

Pandion haliaetus – Sometimes known as the Sea Hawk, Rive Hawk, Fish Hawk. Only extant member of the genus Pandion. Molecular phylogenetic analysis shows that the Pandionidae is a sibling family to the Accipitridae and suggests that the two families diverged more than 50 million years ago. The Accipitridae includes the hawks, eagles, kites, harriers and Old World vultures.