Our 2008 wandering sea eagle was spotted flying over Leighton Moss at approximately noon on Sunday before visiting Haweswater in the Lake district. Haweswater used to be home to England's last breeding pair of golden eagles, but has been home to a solitary male since 2004. He must have thought his luck had changed when a larger eagle flew into his territory on Sunday! He must have quickly realised his mistake as the sea…

The young sea eagle was at Blacktoft Sands yesterday (Wednesday) where it was seen eating a goose by RSPB staff and visitors and showing off its huge wingspan compared to the smaller marsh harriers on the reserve. It was back at Whitton sands this morning.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/b/blacktoftsands/index.aspx

You can view some more photos of it at Whitton sands at:

http://pewit.blogspot.com/2010/04/white…

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…

In the past month, the young sea eagles seem to have finally read the project proposal documents and gravitated towards the coastal areas, estauries and lochs that we believed they would seek out.

Birds X & H continue to be seen daily at Loch Leven, roosting on the islands, where they keep themselves a safe distance from people. We have been recording their diet through observations and collecting regurgitated pellets…

Much has been said in the press and online about the poisoned sea eagle in Angus, our birds are all radio-tracked and carefully monitored which allows us to find dead birds and determine causes of death. Carbofuran is an extremely persistent poison (one of the reasons it is banned) and so animals killed by it will test positive regardless of how long they have been lying out. I don't know why Tayside Police chose January…

An article about one of our 2008 males who we found poisoned in Angus in August:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Sea-eagle-found-poisoned-.5995940.jp

Having been involved in the search I have gone through a whole host of emotions in the last few months, the fact that three white-tailed eagles (1.5% of the Scottish population) have allegedly been persecuted in one small area is sad, disappointing and ultimately…

A belated Happy New Year to all blog readers.

The blog has not been updated for awhile as I was off on leave during the project's 'quieter' period and returned to find the RSPB office shut due to the weather. The eagles have been busy whilst I've been away as have project volunteers Dan and Gayle Spinks, Linsey McLean and Neil Blair and RSPB staff who have been tracking the birds in some tough weather conditions…

....from the Irish release! Following up on some sightings over the last couple of months I radio-tracked over the 'Lecht' in the Grampians on Sunday morning and as well as searching for my Scottish birds also checked for some of Allan's missing Irish birds and was really excited to pick up the beep of a 2008 male, tag 'H' it took me another 10 minutes before I spotted him soaring high above the ski centre. This bird…

As the days start to get shorter its time for our released birds to start dispersing and older birds to be on the move again, taking an interesting in the building geese flocks. Well...this is the theory, 6 of our 2009 birds (3 males and 3 females) have got other ideas, still roosting and feeding in the release wood and spending lazy days flying together and showing talons, looking amused at angry kestrels buzzing them…

We headed over to Mull at the end of last month to check on a couple of our 2007 females that have been there, bird 5 is still on the NW of the island and bird 7 has returned from Shetland where she was seen regularly in April and May. At the time of our visit, she was coincidentally near the Craignure golf course nest, enountering this year's chicks 'Pitch' & 'Putt'.

Our 2009 birds have not…

Six and a half weeks and 650kg of food later it was finally time to release the first batch of this year's sea eagles this week. As always, the stunning release photos don't tell the whole story, 7 of our birds flew strong and high, but one bird took 20 minutes to take off whilst another crash landed and ended up hanging upside down from a gorse bush, that the young eagle found to be surprisingly bendy! Project assistant…

The 15 new birds have been in captivity for nearly a week now, they weighed between 3 and 4.8kg on arrival and have settled down to eating fish (escapees from fish farms!) venison and will try some rabbit over the weekend. Only the 3 youngest birds (aged 6 weeks) are having their food chopped up whilst the others readily using their feet to hold onto prey and pull bits off with their beaks. The birds are all feeling the…

The freezer is stocked, the cages are cleaned and nests built, the CCTV is on and flight booked to bring the birds in next Friday. There has been just enough time for me to pop up to the communal roost near Perth this morning and check on the male (62) and female (93) still using the area, before I leave for Norway tomorrow to help with chick collection.

Alv Ottar Folkestad and volunteers from the Norwegian Ornithological…

Sadly, we confirmed our first casualty of the 2008 released birds in April, a train driver called the office on the 16th April to report a dead sea eagle on the tracks near Greenloaning. The bird’s radio-transmitter had been damaged by the collision so it took a little while to find her; unfortunately, it was ring number 80, our largest female, weighing 6kg. Sea eagles are sometimes casualties of train collisions in Germany…

At the end of March, I spent a few days on Skye helping Anna Crawford and Robin Reid who monitor the breeding sea eagles there, to locate birds that are incubating. It was good to see breeding adult birds and see what we have to look forward to in a few years time. The wild-bred adults were just as curious and tolerant of people as our youngsters with an adult circling low overhead as I watched its partner incubating…

People often ask whether the 2007 and 2008 birds behave the same or differently and looking over our distribution database and reading the March 2008 blogs shows that, so far, yes they do!

Following the initial dispersal in the autumn, February and March seems to be a time for eagles to move south and west and for the first communal roosts away from the release site to break up (last year at Strathbraan and this year…

The upside of the bad weather is that it gives me a chance to catch up on some data entry and update my blog.

The majority of the 2008 released birds are still roosting north of the Tay estuary and moving back and forth into Fife. Their main diet still seems to be rabbit, which they are often seen catching and which we find in pellets at their roost site.

Two birds have broken away and moved south-west, a male, ring…

It has been interesting to observe the dispersal of the second batch of sea eagle chicks, now aged 7-8 months. Five birds have set up a communal roost in the Carse of Gowrie, whilst another four birds continue to roost close to the release site and move throughout Fife. This is a stark contrast to last year’s birds at this time, who had all moved out of Fife, with the majority of birds in a communal roost in Strathbraan…

Bird movements

Ring number 94 or ‘Ralf the regal eagle’, as he’s been nicknamed by the warden, has been on the Isle of May for a month. During his time on the island he was seen pouncing on a young herring gull (no mean feat for a small male eagle!), eating other gulls and fulmars (thankfully without getting oiled) and he also made his YouTube debut, standing on a rock before taking off! And finally on Sunday (21st September…

There is a lot to catch up on since I last wrote and I know that everyone is keen to know how our new arrivals and last year’s birds are getting on.

Norway
 In early June I was lucky enough to get out to Norway, to help with chick collection and experienced just how hard won our birds are. We only collect from nests containing twins, leaving a chick behind. It is not always possible to see into nests from a distance…

It has been a year since I started working on this project and time has flown by. Our next lot of chicks are just starting to hatch in Norway, but it’ll be a few weeks yet until we discover  how many nests containing twins we have in our collection areas. This time last year there was  bad weather in Norway which led some pairs to fail, so we have our fingers crossed! I’ll be joining members of the Norwegian Ornithological…

Bird F, our wandering bird, has continued to clock up his air miles arriving on Mull last week!

A large male with two white talons and the first collected for the project, he has always been a wanderer, reaching Stonehaven within 3 weeks of release. Then he popped into our Loch of Strathbeg reserve before settling in St Fergus in late September where he remained for 3.5 months feasting on rabbits and geese. He suddenly…

Our sociable group of birds is beginning to split up again. After being on his own for four months bird T the male who was near Braco has finally been joined by bird 5 a female. The two have been inseparable for the last 3 weeks, flying together, showing talons and calling to each other so much so that it looked like love was in the air! However, it is worth remembering that they are only 10 months old and still learning…

A belated Happy New Year to everyone reading this. It's been a little while since my last blog and as usual the birds have kept me busy.

I arrived in the office on Monday 17th December to find my inbox full of emails about a sea eagle on the Isle of May in the firth of Forth, seen by several fishermen over the weekend. I shot off down to Crail and Anstruther to try and pick up a radio-signal, but only ended up with…

Since the birds were released, we have been leaving food for them on a regular basis to help their transition into faring for themselves. This is what their parents would do naturally in the wild, leave food near the nest to help them survive the first winter.  This food dump was used regularly by a group of six of the birds, but they have recently stopped using it and the group has split up. Two of the birds have headed…