Tuesday, January 23, 2024

2½ Half Weeks with Mrs Rauer

Mrs Rauer's Journey is a fantastic story-map which follows the journey of a female osprey, named Mrs Rauer, as she migrates  halfway around the world from Oslofjord, Norway to the Western Sahara. 

Mrs Rauer's 18 day journey is fraught with danger. Of the eleven ospreys GPS tagged by Østfold University College only Mrs Rauer is still alive. Now, during her 5,700 km mile migration, Mrs Rauer will have to contend with deadly wind turbines in the English Channel, Spanish poachers and land mines in the Sahara. To help visualize the dangers to migratory birds NRK has overlaid their map with millions of red dots, each one marking the death of an individual bird.

According to NRK there are now 600 million fewer birds in Europe than there were forty years ago. Luckily Mrs Rauer successfully completed her journey to the Western Sahara and in April of this year she managed to successfully complete the return journey to Norway. In even better news in 2023 she managed to rear a female chick and an adopted male chick, before departing once more for the Sahara in September.

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