Lady returns--for 21st time!

Lady has again returned to her home on the banks of the Loch of the Lowes, a lake in Perthshire, Scotland last week. It is not unusual for birds, or for that matter Lady (photo), an osprey, to return to her nest every year.

What makes this particular migration--3,000 miles from West Africa--worthy of note, is that lady has returned to the same nest here in Scotland for more than two decades.

But, you might protest, we know that an osprey's life span is only about eight years. So how could that be? We know it is Lady because of a webcam (more than 130,000 people watched her the day after she arrived) that has followed her for that length of time. In fact her age is estimated to be about 26 years old.

Even more astounding is that Lady hatched two fledglings last year after making a remarkable recovery from a mystery illness. Her fight against the illness became an internet sensation after the Scottish Wildlife Trust documented the drama with the nest webcam.

This year she returned with her current mate, a young 11 year-old, that came back and settled on her nest. Most ospreys mate for life, but Lady has outlived most of her previous partners. Rangers are watching closely to see if she is still fertile this year.

Lady is expected to lay between two and four eggs this month, with chicks hatching around six weeks later. She is estimated to have raised 48 chicks at the loch in the 21 years she has been breeding there.