Most of us have a Christmas day routine don’t we? We do the same things on this day every year, whether it be eat the same food, see the same people, be in the same place. In one mid Wales household, it’s time to dust off the CDs and listen once again to a certain violinist play a certain violin concerto. I’m convinced Heifetz plays it better every year.

Christmas is also a great time for telling stories. Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Hans Christian Andersen along with many others would tell you the same if they were still with us. So how about a Christmas story this year, only not one drawn up from an author's imagination, but based on fact and observations?

Rewind to April 29th this year, it’s around 10am. Monty has just about had enough female problems to last several years, he’s currently with Blue FS who is so hungry she mistakes Monty’s left leg for a flounder.

Someone’s pulling my leg..

Elin has come and gone, Seren is around but won’t commit to Monty, and Blue FS is starving. Many other females have paid a visit also. Probably the last thing Monty wanted at this time was another female turning up and adding to his problems. It never rains does it..

At 10:14 precisely, along pops this bird. A white ringed female osprey who lands right on top of the camera pole, just a few feet away from all the the chaos.

UR having a laugh?

After a few emails and telephone calls, we learn that ‘White UR’ is a Scottish osprey, hatched in 2010 and ringed as a chick in July that year by Ian Francis, Ewan Weston, and Jenny Lennon. Here’s a wonderful photo taken by Ewan of White UR shortly after being ringed in the nest.

Great we thought, we’ve actually seen an osprey for the first time since she was ringed three years previously. There was a also a decent chance that White UR might stay with such an eligible bachelor around and a whole estuary to themselves.  

We were wrong, however. Tim Mackrill from Rutland had seen White UR on Tanji Marsh, Gambia, on January 25th, 2011, when this osprey was around eight months old. So that made it three separate sightings, by three separate individuals of White UR, in three separate years! That wasn’t the end of the story, however. Our friend Chris Wood from Rutland had also seen White UR in February of this year, again in the Tanji area in the Gambia.

Fast forward to December this year, just a few days ago,  and Chris is on his annual excursion to the Gambia again. He’s photographed lots of birds including ospreys of course. You know what’s coming next don’t you...?

Photo taken December 13th, 2013

So in all, in three and a half years, White UR has been spotted five times in three different locations. Here’s a quick visual summary:

White UR didn't stay on the Dyfi for long. After just over an hour she was gone, there was no way she was going to get embroiled in an osprey love triangle, and a heated one at that. At 11:30 she headed off north, she had even caught her own fish. Clever girl.

We don’t know where she spent the rest of her summer, she probably spent the next four months in Scotland looking around for a suitable male and nest site. Let’s hope she found a McMonty somewhere. We do know where she spends her winters though, on the western coast of the Gambia in the Tanji area.

Bird ringing and tracking have taught us so much over the years, particularly during the last decade or so where information is so much easier to find and share on the web. Is it significant that White UR has spent all of her winters in one area? Do ospreys that find a winter home patch and stick to it do better than those birds that wander around more?

Thanks to Chris and the guys in Scotland for the photographs, it’s one heck of a story. We learn more about these amazing birds every year and the more we know, the more we can help them. Have a great day today, keep warm and look out for those ospreys coming back in a few weeks. You never know, White UR might be paying you a visit in the not too distant future.

Nadolig Llawen i chi gyd.