Missing Scottish osprey spotted on Senegal beach
The bird, known as Blue YD, was tagged with a lightweight satellite tracker when born at the Scottish Wildlife Trust's reserve near Forfar in July 2012.
An osprey missing from a Scottish nature reserve for more than 18 months has been found almost 3,000 miles away on a beach in Senegal.
The bird, known as Blue YD, was tagged with a lightweight satellite tracker when born at the Scottish Wildlife Trust's (SWT) reserve near Forfar, Angus, in July 2012.
The tag stopped transmitting in May 2014 and the SWT relied on eye-witness reports of Blue YD's travels, which placed him at various times in North Yorkshire and St Andrews, Fife, but he has now been found to have joined the winter osprey migration to west Africa.
Blue YD was spotted by staff from the Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust, which runs a project in Senegal to educate African schoolchildren on the osprey migration.
During this year's trip, the team travelled to Lompoul sur Mer to look for another osprey and found Blue YD in January.
The SWT said it was "thrilled'' at the news.
Ospreys in Britain migrate to west Africa for winter and usually return to their breeding areas in March but experts say younger birds may not reappear at the sites from which they fledge for several years.
John Wright, from the Rutland Osprey Project, said: "This is the second visit I've made to Lompoul sur Mer and both times I've counted around 100 ospreys consisting of many German and Scottish birds.
"It was fantastic to see that Blue YD was alive and well. He'll no doubt be enjoying the final few weeks of warmth before he makes his way back to the UK for the breeding season at the end of March.''
Once extinct in the UK, there are now about 240 breeding osprey pairs in the UK thanks to conservation projects, the SWT said.
Jonathan Pinnick, assistant manager at the SWT Loch of the Lowes visitor centre, said: "It's wonderful to learn more about the life of a bird that we have followed since it was a fledgling and it shows the value of tagging in allowing us to track the life history of individual birds.
"Perhaps he will be spotted back in Angus this summer, hopefully breeding and helping the continued recovery of the osprey population in Scotland.''