As a result of the habitat restoration and improvement work carried out by the OSPREY CENTER collective, in the Miera estuary (ZEC Red Natura 2000), in Santander Bay we have a pair of ospreys (Pandion haliaetus), since 2017.
It took 6 years for the same male with another female to successfully raise 2 juvenile individuals called Mouro and Miera, for the first time in the 2022 season, a fact that is undoubtedly very important for the species, since it has not happened since the 80s of the last century.
Carlos Sainz Concha, environmental divulgator and coordinator of the osprey recovery project in Cantabria, will come to talk about this first and to date, only breeding pair in the entire north of the Iberian peninsula.
The breeding pair is made up of Txuriko (with yellow ring and P1 digits), a Scottish male translocated in 2013 to the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, which established his territory in the Bay in 2017, and the female, Landa (orange T06 ring), of French origin, translocated in 2018 from the Bois d’Orleans, to the Marismas D`Orx, also within a plan to reintroduce the species.
In the 2023 season, the same couple has once again given us another joy, raising three juvenile individuals, one female and two males, baptized with the names of Bahía, Laro and Jano. These specimens born in the Santander Bay announce the beginning of the species recolonization on the Cantabrian coast, a population that serves as a bridge between the closest breeding colonies of France and Andalusia.
