Monty

Monty was the breeding male at the Dyfi from 2011 to 2019 and he is arguably the most famous, and loved, osprey in the world!

Monty was unringed so we never knew exactly how old he was or where he came from. We know that he has been around on the Dyfi since at least 2008 and probably 2007, so his year of birth has to be 2005 or earlier.

Monty was a great father and provider. He had a laid-back character and was seldom agitated. He had quite a dark chest band for a male and extremely unusual coloured eyes. Adult ospreys have yellow coloured eyes, but Monty's were  a deep orange colour. This is extremely unusual and we know of only one other osprey which had similar orange eyes - a male osprey named Henry from Black Isle, Scotland (1998 - 2007/8).

Monty was a fantastic fisherman whose fishing habits have been closely studied.  Two separate scientific studies conducted in 2013 and 2015 have concluded that there is no correlation between the fish species that Monty catches and environmental factors such as tidal phase, temperature, time of day etc. It seemed he was able to catch a fish whenever he (or his family) was hungry and did not need to link his fishing trips to any other factor. Monty's typical catch was grey mullet but he has been known to bring home some more unusual fish including a long eel-like garfish, a poisonous greater weaver fish and the occasional twait shad!