White stork

you Welcome to the Net Wilding Podcast with me, Isabella Tree, author and co-owner of the Net Rewilding Project.

My guest today is the wonderful Tim Mackrill, a man who is everything to ospreys.

He has a PhD on osprey migration, he's travelled to West Africa to study ospreys, and he's the author of two books, The Rutland Water Ospreys and Spotlight Ospreys.

Part of his work for the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation is to reintroduce ospreys to England and reinforce populations here.

And I'm really thrilled to have him here today to try and erect an osprey platform in one of our oak trees to try and entice them here to NEP.

Tim, that's amazing and amazing to see the landscape through your osprey eyes.

It's an incredible morning and we can't wait for an osprey to find the welcome mat that we're putting out for them.

If you'd like to learn more about the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation or even report an osprey or a white-tailed eagle sighting, go to the website roydennis.org and you can read about Tim's adventures with ospreys in his books The Rutland Water Ospreys and Spotlight Ospreys.

[eagle chirping] One bald eagle pair in Vermilion, Ohio, reused the same nest for 34 years, adding branches each year until it weighed more than two tons.

[eagle chirping] But Europe's migratory white storks get the award for best reuse.

One nest site, still used in 1930, and likely seeing many repairs over the years, dated back to 1549.

That's a continuous series of stork pairs nesting in one spot for 381 years.