Foreign Ospreys

During the spring holidays I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Majorca south-east of Spain. There are few indigenous large mammals due to its isolation but it has similar birds to the rest of Europe. One bird I was particularly keen to spot was an Osprey, which sometimes can be spotted soaring over the quite substantial marshy regions of the island. Fortunately for me, there was a lot of marshy land on the north-west area, where the hotel I was staying in was located.

For this reason I had a reasonably good chance of being able to spot one myself if there were any around. There was even a path out the back of the hotel complex leading to a tall hide, from which I was able to see for miles. If there was any chance of spotting an osprey this hide would be the place to do it.

One day, with some effort, I got up early to go to the hide, unfortunately I hadn’t thought to bring binoculars or a proper camera, so the camera on my ipad had to make do. I waited a while at the hide, there were marsh harriers circling quite close to the hide and a wader flew very close one time. It was about this time I spotted a bird of prey circling far in the distance above some ponds. It seemed to dive down into the ponds and then occasionally it was not visible. Less than 10 minutes after I had spotted this bird, it came much closer and I could visibly see white plumage, it was this that convinced me that this was an osprey.

Using my ipad, I clumsily recorded a short video of it flying past, it was relatively close but because of the ipad, trying to zoom in wouldn’t have worked very well. Shortly after I recorded the video, it vanished, but I was still pleased to have seen a bird which, at least in the UK, receives quite a lot of attention.