Yesterday was quite a full day - mostly spent at Minsmere doing media interviews about white-tailed eagles.
Since I had to be at Minsmere at 0530 I drove over the evening before and stayed locally at the Eel's Foot Inn (interesting name) - a nice pint of Adnams and a delicious ham, eggs and chips sent me off to bed! And a barn owl was flying over the reserve. It caught what I think was a water vole and flew off to a distant nest. Any day with a barn owl in it is a good day.
Then up early and a series of live TV interviews for BBC Breakfast and recordings for regional and national TV, BBC and ITV, during the day. And a live 5Live radio interview too. They mostly went OK - I think. It's sometimes difficult to find the right word but I much prefer live interviews - once they are done they are done, and you can't be editted!
The Independent covered the story in some detail.
The Telegraph published a letter from a Wiltshire farmer who had had a sea eagle on his land one winter, overlapping with lambing, and who wasn't at all bothered by its presence.
And all of this publicity flushed out some potential funders for the project. One of these sounded really quite promising but we will see. It's an interesting impact - some people are shocked at some of the anti-raptor attitudes and want to stand up for birds of prey.Although I spent something like 9 hours at Minsmere my bird list wasn't great - hobby, turtle dove, Mediterranean gull, Cetti's warbler and a sparrowhawk which whizzed past, distractingly, mid-live-interview!
But whatever happens with white-tailed eagles in Suffolk - this cut is the first of many.
I have already made my comments on sea eagles before, although I have now voted on the Guardian site. It must have been the Adnams that caused the short bird list at Minsmere. I spent one and half days there last week with 14 sightings of bitterns including 2 that flew into the reeds and skypointed together. The hobby are obviously trained because they didn't appear until a school party came in the hide and then they started catching dragonflies right in front of us. I missed the turtle dove, which is a pity because in Wiltshire there are very very few left and haven't seen one for years.