My Norwegian Adventure (part 1)

This year’s trip to Norway to collect the final batch of sea eagle chicks got off to an ambitious start. Being the last year of the project, there were high hopes of getting the maximum number of 20 chicks to bring back to Scotland! I had even been in training to try and keep up with Alv Ottar Folkestad of the Norwegian Ornithological Society, who has been monitoring white-tailed eagles  for about 40 years. He is super fit, and has been involved with the west coast reintoroduction,  and the east coast re introduction since the start. Now in his 70s and retired, there’s no stopping him, and I was told I would have a hard time keeping up!  One of the first questions Alv Ottar and his assistant Ingar asked me when I got off the aircraft at Alesund was; “would you like to visit a nest right now?”. An offer I was never going to refuse! This nest was less than 20 mins from the airport and a logical stop off on the way back to Alv Ottar’s house where I was going to be staying for the week.

The nest had one chick, which Alv Ottar ringed with Norwegian coloured rings and we left it in the nest. We can’t take single chicks from a nest as that would cause the nest to fail.

The following day was what I would describe as nothing less than EPIC. We set off on a boat from the bottom of Alv Ottar’s garden (which happens to be the fjord) at around 10am, and before I knew it, the sky was a funny colour and I was very hungry and tired. It was 3:30am and we still had about 7 nests to check on the way home!!! During this very long day we had visited around 30 nests and had only managed to collect one chick. It soon became apparent that the vast majority of nests only contained one chick if any at all. We didn’t climb to all of the nests. Alv Ottar was able to tell by looking carefully at them through the telescope whether they were active or not, and even how many chicks they had in them!

At this time of year, the sky doesn’t get dark in Norway. At around 1:00am there seems to be something resembling a sunset, and then again at 3:30am the sky lightens a bit to become daytime again. This makes it very difficult to stop doing field work!! I’m quite glad that here in Scotland, we get at least a few hours of darkness in summer as it gives us an excuse to go to sleep!

With our one lonely chick, we returned home at 11am the following day. Slightly demoralised and very tired, but this was only day one/two of field work! ……

The first chick to be collected this year at the foot of his nest.

Alv Ottar at a nest containing one chick (at 3:20am!!)