Eagle alert

Wow! I'm still trying to get my breath back after running to the Whin Hill watchpoint to see one of the most impressive of British birds, a juvenile white-tailed eagle, circling low over Island Mere. With a two metre wingspan and broad wings, these truly are impressive birds, and it totally dwarfed the crows and marsh harriers that mobbed it as it slowly gained height before drifting off south.

It's not often that you can successfully predict something turning up at Minsmere, as I did in a recent blog, but that's perhaps an advantage of knowing how these scarce migrants have behaved on previous occasions that they've appeared in East Anglia. As they are prone to following the coastline, trying to work how to fly back to Norway, it's certainly not impossible that it could reappear in the next few days.

I didn't grab my camera before I ran - and it didn't quite come close enough anyway, so instead, here's a photo taken in Scotland by Ian McCarthy (rspb-images.com)

With such a big bird of prey circling, it's perhaps not a surprise that the crows, gulls and ducks all scattered to a safer distance. Even the greylag geese and grey herons took flight around the reedbed. One bonus was that the three spoonbills flew from the South Levels, coming in to land on the North Levels pools as we watched. Earlier today they had been joined on the South Levels by a fourth bird.

Other sightings at Island Mere today included the regular otters, water rails, bitterns and marsh harriers, as well a flock of tufted ducks and the displaying pair of great crested grebes.

The eagle wasn't the only surprise today, as a male Dartford warbler was found in the gorse around the Wild Zone this morning. It was even singing, but I suspect it's unlikely to stay there for long and will soon relocate to the nearby heaths.

Dartford warbler by David Fairhurst

The Scrape was quite quiet today as the finishing touches are completed on the new fence - we expect it to be completed by the end of next week. However, this didn't mean that there was nothing to see - just smaller numbers than usual. Sightings included the two redhead smew, oystercatchers, black-tailed godwits, turnstones, dunlins and a yellow-legged gull.

Despite the chill wind there was also lots of birdsong, including goldfinch, marsh tit and nuthatch close to the Work Centre, chaffinches, blue, great and coal tits, wrens and robins.

So, having successfully predicted the arrival of the eagle, let's hope that we have clear skies tomorrow morning for the solar eclipse, and in the evening for our star gazing event. There's no need to book, so turn up at the Discovery Centre at 8.30 in the morning for the eclipse or 7.30 pm for star gazing.