....I do like to be the sea, especially if I'm a young sea eagle...making the best use of the themals during a warm April and heading south from Angus to the to the Forth.
TurquoiseZ, H, X and Z have all spent most of April and May there being joined by 1 and 3 year old females. Turquoise8 also broke away from the group heading even further south and spending some time in Northumberland.
TurquoiseZ (Norbett) has been making some of the biggest trips, first leaving the Backwater reservoir area in early April to move onto the Forth and popping back into Loch Leven at the end of April. His biggest movement was from Driesh in Angus to Tentsmuir over 40 miles away 2 days later.
Below is a map of his movements and him flying over the seals at Tentsmuir – many thanks to James Boardman for permission to use the photos
We were concerned about the effects of the strong winds on the eagle project on both sides of the North sea last week. I headed up to the release site with trepidation to check for any damage after the strong winds, luckily no trees had fallen on the aviaries but the wood certainly looks very different and this year’s young eagles will have no shortage of perches with all the fallen trees. In Norway Alv Ottar is out daily checking nests ands there have been some failures with young chicks being exposed to the wind and rain however, the season is looking good.
YellowO has returned from the Isle of Bute being tracked and seen over Tentsmuir on the 13th May. YellowE moved south from Aberdeenshire in early April to Atholl estate and the Loch Garry area in Perthshire where she is being spotted regularly.
I was lucky enough to get over to Mull during April to film some updates with Dave for a new sea eagle dvd for schools, its great to see how the west coast population is really going from strength to strength and share people’s excitement at spotting their first eagle at the Loch Frisa hide and we can’t wait to bring this experience to people in the east, although I expect the birds will keep us guessing for a couple more years about where they may breed. We’re already starting to see a trickle as increasing numbers of people contact me each year hoping to spot an east coast eagle during their summer holidays.
I’ll be jet-washing the cages and building new nests with project volunteers next week then off to Norway soon after to start collecting our fifth lot of chicks. Its really exciting to think that there are sea eagle chicks sitting in nests in Norway right now and growing fast, that will be flying around in East Scotland in a few months time