We regret to announce the death of the rescued migratory Osprey bird despite all efforts to rehabilitate and eventually release it back into the wild. The four-year-old bird of prey died at the weekend while under the care of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) veterinarians and a KWS-licensed Raptor Rehabilitation Centre in Karen, Nairobi.
A post-mortem examination report conducted by veterinary teams attributed the death to long term starvation which precipitated systemic organs failure.
The raptor bird was rescued last week in Siaya by a member of the community, Mr Walter Oloo, who reported the sighting to the KWS Siaya County office on January 20. The bird was brought to the KWS Veterinary Department in Nairobi and later transferred to the Raptor Rehabilitation Centre. By the time the bird was delivered to the city, it had been severely dehydrated, weak and emaciated from the long flight and minor injuries while trapped by the fishing net. It weighed 950g against the normal range of 1.3-1.8kg weight of an adult osprey.
We were feeding and treating the fish-eating bird back to good health with a plan to release it at the exact site it was rescued in the Lake Victoria catchment so that the bird does not lose its bearings on the return epic flight Northwards in early March.
We had received communication from Finland that it was ringed in June 2017 and was mature for breeding (The bird’s origin had been established from a refering ring on its leg whose details show that it was ringed in Finland (Museum Zool, Helsinki Finland, www.ring.ac, M-68528). The 950g fish-eating male bird had flown to Kenya, covering a distance of 6,948 kilometres or 4,317 miles to land in Siaya County.
Kenya is a signatory to the Convention on Migratory species (CMS), whose conference of parties is to be held next month in India and one of the key mandates is to ensure the conservation of migratory bird species and their habitats.
