Villagers in Guinea help find him - admit ‘wild birds only of interest as food’ - but agree to help conserve and ask to change 4K’s ‘awful name’.

A Conservation Without Borders expedition led by Sacha Dench, UN Ambassador for Migratory Species (aka the Human Swan), has for the first time followed the entire migration of ospreys from the UK to West Africa.

A key aim was to track down the exact wintering site of famous osprey ‘4K’ and investigate the threats faced in Africa. 4K and three other ospreys have carried GPS-enabled backpacks that have given live updates on location, speed, and altitude on their entire journeys and helped guide the expedition team and their investigations.

The expedition team tracking the ospreys have discovered that on his journey, 4k – like many other migrating birds – has survived over 30 different threats encountered by the team including wildfires, electrocution, extreme winds, sandstorms, helicopters spraying bacterial toxins, hunting for the taxidermy trade, oil spills, discarded fishing nets, natural predation and more.

Two of the four ospreys tracked by the project ‘Tweed’ and ‘Kirk’, have died, the last bird ‘Glen’ had been assumed dead twice but has reappeared in the Sahara Desert.

Sacha Dench said

“Seeing first hand all of the challenges these birds face is like watching a stunt person in action. We’ve watched with hearts racing as 4K and our other tagged ospreys face threats I’d never have imagined as well as ones we knew were there.

Living out of expedition vehicles with information from the birds’ tracks, partners in countries across Europe and Africa have been able to take us into remote areas and bring incredible insights into the challenges faced by the ospreys and many other birds on migration.

With such detailed tracks and sharing data online, we’ve also attracted people and industries along the flyway to get involved – sending information on threats and helping track down the ospreys at sea and in remote locations.”

Who is 4K?

Male Osprey known as 4K - fledged in Rutland Waters in 2013 - now spends his summers on the Belvoir estate. He has been fitted with a GPS-enabled backpack since 2018 and closely followed since then.

He bred for the first time this year with a Scottish female and produced two chicks on the 15^th April – a male and a female.

Sacha Dench has been in regular communication with the teams at Rutland Water and the Belvoir estate, and conservationist Dr Tim Mackrill who are jointly monitoring 4K’s progress.

4Ks speedy journey

4K arrived at his wintering site at the Pongo estuary on the 4^th October having left Rutland on the 9^th September - a total of 26 days. He spent 16 of those days actually migrating and the other 10 at his regular stop-over site at Baie des Veys in Northern France. The total distance of his migration was 5,280km (3,280 miles).

The GPS information also revealed that 4K reached altitudes of over 2,000 metres and showed that at one stage he averaged 60km per hour over 12 hours.

To date, nobody had ever seen 4K at his wintering site in the Pongo estuary to understand local threats, so it was going to be a major challenge for Sacha and the expedition team to track him down.

Tracking down 4K – the final push

The route from Guinea Bissau to the Pongo River delta took the team over some of the ‘worst roads in Africa’ and on arriving they had to find locals who would take them by canoe to try and find 4K.

The expedition team crossed into Guinea during the third week of November and were receiving regular GPS information about 4K’s pattern of behaviour. Tim MacKrill identified the 3 most highly visited sites in an area between two remote fishing villages on the Pongo called Saka and Dobire – about 60 km north of the capital of Guinea, Conakry.

On the 1^st December they set off to find the fishing village of Dobire to a large crowd waving them off as news of the team’s search for 4K had spread around the communities via local radio and word of mouth.

Some of Sacha’s team were doubtful they’d be able to find him – but after several hours of searching as disappointment was setting in an osprey was spotted in the distance that took flight and revealed a GPS backpack antenna and blue leg ring. The team managed to get some film and stills of him which confirmed they had found him and his hitherto secret hideaway.

Local villagers were so excited that they’d found him they decided that he needed a proper name – and declared 4K is now named after their village Dobire (pronounced Dobeeray)

Tim Mackrill said:

“We have been following 4K on his annual migration from the UK to Guinea for five years and the satellite tracking data gives a very detailed insight into his migration and wintering habits. However, there is only so much we can learn by looking at Google Earth and aerial imagery. The fact that Sacha and the Flight of the Osprey team were able to visit in person means that we know much more about the landscape, the local people, and some of the threats that migratory birds face at the site. The conservation of migratory species like the osprey depends on international collaboration and friendships. I am particularly pleased that local people, who may have seen 4K every day, now know more about him and the amazing journey he makes every year. 

4k achieved astonishing speeds and heights on his journey. His navigation is partly instinct, but he will have learnt from previous trips to recognise the landscape from afar – and also potential threats. An osprey’s eyesight is amazing – offering much better information than we could ever get from Google maps!

Once he left France he truly motored! He crossed Spain in just 2 days – zooming past the expedition team in southern Spain. He crossed into Morocco on the 23^rd September, skirted the western edge of the Atlas mountains and took just two days to cross the Sahara desert. At one point he did 500km in a day just before crossing into Guinea and arriving at his regular tree on the Pongo

We are just so delighted that Sacha and the team managed to find him – and even better got some great images of him”

Sacha concluded:

“I can totally understand why 4K has been so faithful to this area – it’s a great location - home to swathes of mangrove forests that are breeding grounds for fish, and there are very few people to disturb him. 

But there are threats, and here the main one is the vast amount of discarded fishing net as there are no facilities for collection or processing plastics -  a local fisherman reported releasing 2 ospreys from being entangled in fishing net.

Another threat I hadn’t anticipated is hunger - as I showed one of the locals how to use binoculars to see the birds up close they were amazed, and admitted that to them usually ‘wild birds are only of interest as food’. It’s great that elders and fishermen have agreed to collaborate on conservation of ospreys from now on.”