AFTER taking their first hesitant flights, our young ospreys are now rapidly improving the flying and fishing skills which will take them southwards towards their West African wintering areas over the next few weeks.

A record five pairs have raised young this year around Kielder Reservoir, the region’s sole breeding locality. Now in their tenth year at Kielder, it was originally thought that there were four pairs of ospreys, the same number as last year, all using nests on wooden tree-top platforms specially constructed to attract them.

But very late in the day a fifth nest containing at least one large chick was found well away from the regular sites. This fifth nest was in a natural forest site and was a real bonus for another successful season with at least eight chicks fledging from the area.

Unfortunately, ospreys have still shown no signs of attempting to colonize other seemingly suitable waters, such as Derwent Reservoir, although once again younger non-breeding birds have summered. However, it’s worth remembering that birds frequented the Kielder area for a couple of decades before the first breeding took place. It seems that ospreys like to take their time.

While they and other summer visitors are setting off on migration some adult cuckoos have already completed their journey. In June I wrote about how satellite trackers had provided fascinating new knowledge about their migration routes and just how early many depart from Britain.

The British Trust for Ornithology has provided an update on 14 of the tagged birds. This shows that a couple of them are still crossing the Sahara. Daytime temperatures there are currently over 40C and in those incredible hot and dry conditions they must be facing a very difficult journey without food.

Others have already reached their regular wintering destinations in West Africa. Some seem to be nicely settled in Burkino Faso where there has been good rainfall and where temperatures are in the comfortable 20s, a bit like those we’ve been enjoying. More importantly, it’s provided the ideal warm and damp conditions to produce their favoured food, large caterpillars of many moth species.

Meanwhile, their young raised by foster parents here are now migrating alone. Last week a friend told me how he watched a fledged cuckoo being fed by a dunnock. He assumed it was the foster parent. But, incredibly, young cuckoos can produce such compelling hunger calls and beg for food in such a way that it can trigger an immediate response from other passing birds to start feeding them. Wily birds cuckoos!