After a whirlwind arrival day meeting Stewart Stevenson - environment minister and the Norwegian Consul, the chicks have now been in captivity for two weeks and are growing fast. We have just had the sexes back and we have 10 males and 6 females, we thought we had an even split when we were collecting in Norway, so obviously have a couple of big males! The chicks weighed between 3.5 and 5.5kg when they arrived. They  a…

It is often hard to see into the nests in Norway  you can see a nest is active but can't see how many heads are in there. We drove to nest, pulling over at the side of the road to check it with the scope before we walked in. amazingly we could see 3 heads, triplets! This is great as it means we can collect two chicks from this nest, triplets are quite rare as not many pairs are able to feed 3 chicks or build a nest…

On the 19th we drove to some sites further north and collected our youngest chick from a large over-hanging birch tree, this was a nest we tried to collect from last year, but following a storm both chicks were found dead in the nest. The chicks react differently to your head popping over the edge of the nest depending on their age and personality. The younger/quieter chicks tend to flatten themselves, lying as low as…

Sorry I am having to write this in sections as I just wrote a whole blog post with all the photos in and it didn't upload properly so having to start again!

The next day was not quite as successful, we were out with Monica, a present of a radio programme very similar to 'Out of Door's dealing with all things in the countryside for NRK (the Norwegian equivalent of the BBC). The media in Norway are also interested in…

As always at this time on year I am now chasing my tail, with 16 new hungry mouths to feed twice a day! We imported our latest batch  on Friday 24th June, bringing the project total to 80 over the last five years. But, before I get to that I thought you would like to see how chick collection went in Norway.....

I flew into Alesund from Aberdeen on the 15th June, it was still light as we chatted all things sea eagle at 11pm…

The cages are all clean and ready, not an eagle dropping in sight from last year and the nice, soft nests made from garden bark and sphagnum moss are built,. The freezers are nearly full and I have arranged to pick up some haddock from M&M Spinks in Arbroath and some waste venison from Highland Game next week. My phonecalls in the office always cause a lot of laughter as people overheard me say ‘Necks? Oh yes they love…

....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…

....Then head to an RSPB reserve!

A yellow tag (2010) bird was spotted at Loch Winnoch this morning, the tags were too far away to read, but I'm hoping it might be one of the west coast wanderers heading home from Mull! Hopefully it will pop back in on the weekend and we can identify it. TurquoiseH (2009 female) has been back at Vane Farm this week.

Moving further north turquoiseZ and turquoiseK have been regularly…

The mystery of a dead sea eagle, released in 2008, whose body disappared is reported in the Scotsman today:

Always the way, just finished updating the blog and got a text from Iain at Vane Farm to say that he has just radio-tracked turquoiseH back at Loch Leven, lets hope she sticks around until the weekend!

October sees the start of  'talks season' as local groups start their winter programmes, so its a chance to get out and about and tell people about the project. I was also invited along to our local Tayside Wildlife explorer's group, some of the members were so good at radio-tracking that I am fearing for my job!

The next project talk is on the 17th November, Lockerbie town hall at 7:30pm with the Lockerbie…

People often assume that the work calms down for the project team once we are no longer tied to feeding the captive eagles each day, this couldn't be further from the truth with a total of 52 eagles to track and the sightings flooding in!

Every year is slightly different, some of our large females who had been bouncing around the cages looking ready to go for a couple of weeks before release, have been extremely…

After nearly 8 weeks in captivity our 19 young sea eagles have finally been released in Fife this week, marking the fourth year of East coast releases and a total of 63 sea eagles released since 2007.

On the 11th August, we weighed and measured all the birds and fitted them with their wing tags and radio backpacks. The colour for 2010 is yellow with a black letter or number. All of our birds had put on weight with the…

As I walked up to do the morning feed yesterday I could hear a commotion, lots of high pitched raptor alarm calls, concerned that the chicks may be fighting or something was wrong I ran up and checked on our two biggest birds in cage 1. These are two large females, now over 10 weeks old and weighing over 5kg, they were stood on their perch, hackles up and heads bobbing as they screamed at a buzzard that had landed outside…

Friday 25th June saw us successfully import 19 sea eagle chicks from Norway for the fourth year of the East Scotland Sea Eagle project.

You can view the BBC coverage at:

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/10425042.stm

Or Scottish Government video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSpvipA9mB4

I was lucky enough to help members of the NOF our Birdlife partner in Norway as they collected chicks during the…

May is all about getting ready for our next batch of chicks and whilst heading up to the aviaries to jetwash and disinfect them and whilst getting the buckest and scrubbing brushes out of the car last week I looked up to see an owl chick watching with interest! 

Getting the aviaires ready took a couple of days and some hard work from some willing volunteers, once we had cleaned them we built our new nests (photos below…

I wrote in my last post that we were expecting our first chicks to hatch next month in Norway, but concerns of a later season due to the prolonged winter are unfounded and I heard a couple of days ago that the first chicks in our collection areas have started hatching, although its is still too early to see how successful the season will be. I'm always learning more about white-tailed eagles from Alv Ottar who coordinates…

We record the diet of our released eagles by collecting regurgitated pellets from roosts and from watching them hunting and were able to add a surprising new species to this list last week, when two RSPB members (Debbie and John Lindop) spent an hour watching one of our 2009 males (tag Z) catching frogs near Aboyne!

One of our 2008 males returned from Ardnamurchan last week and has been spending time near Loch of the Lowes…