Sea eagle heads to England for Easter break!

Easter weekend was an exciting time for birders in Northumberland and Yorkshire as one of our 2008 birds wandered into Northern England for the bank holiday weekend, first being seen near Newcastle airport last Wednesday, then moving south-west to Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire and back out to Flamborough head on Sunday with the most recent sightings being over a lake near Hull by Natural England staff yesterday. This is the second time one of our 2008 birds has wandered into England, the first being an afternoon visit to Bowness on Solway in February last year and birders in Cumbria are eagerly awaiting this bird’s arrival too. Many thanks to everyone who has emailed in sightings and photos of this bird. The photos below were taken by Tom Wilson. I am at the RSPB members' weekend 16-18th April at York university so am hoping to get out and spot our wanderer.

Just as everyone was getting used to the daily visits of sea eagles to Vane Farm they wandered off again in the middle of March! Our large female, tag H has moved north to join birds V, 8, 3 and O around at Tentsmuir point in North-East Fife and X spent some time up in Angus, before returning to Loch Leven on the 25^th March and attempting to catch a lapwing! He was unsuccessful and soon chased off by the other territorial lapwing, at only 11 months old, last year's birds are still getting to grips with new potential prey. From observations of hunting and collection of pellets at roost sites, we now have a list of 31 species that our East Scotland Sea eagles are known to have eaten, whilst over 40 species have been collected from nests on the west coast.

 You can view two fantastic videos of the birds at Loch Leven on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FDbWpyhCYk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7JM3l5Uc7U

Many thanks to Ken Jack from Dalgety Bay for putting this footage together.

Ralf has also been absent from Loch of Strathbeg for the last couple of weeks, but has been moving over Ballater and another 2009 bird has been moving over Mar Lodge and Glen Derry in the Cairngorms.

Our Loch of Kinnordy reserve near Kirriemuir is seeing more regular visits by the eagles and some dramamtic photos of one of our 2009 birds attempting to take a swan were taken on the 23^rd March (many thanks to Jim Brown for these).

I spoke to Alv Ottar in Norway last week to see how the Norwegian birds are doing. The end of March and early April are normally peak egg-laying time for the white-tailed eagles in our collection area, with nest building starting in January. However, we are on tenderhooks this year as due to the long, cold winter, the snow is only just clearing from the eagles' nests so some birds are only just starting to nest build, this means that egg laying could be delayed and some pairs may give this season a miss altogether. Alv Ottar will be watching the birds intently over the next couple of weeks to see what this season holds for us and could mean we import our chicks slightly later than usual this year.

We have had some recent sightings of our Midlothian birds around the Pentlands and I spotted one over the Livingston off the M8 last weekend, so do keep an eye out for them there. The warmer weather (inbetween bouts of snow!) means that this is a great time of year to see the young birds soaring, flying together and attempting to talon grapple, the young birds will start to show this sociable behaviour from about 4 months old and it is fantastic to see them practising being eagles!