As you will have noticed by now the Eyes to the Skies website has not been updated as much as we would have liked since the end of summer. The Eyes to the Skies project is coming to an end and there have been some staff changes, that is why it has been a little quite there of late. Fear not, the legacy of the project will continue through the Red Kite feeding station at Tollie and we will continue to work with some of the local schools to spread the word about the kites in the north of Scotland. We have two new areas on the main RSPB website, a page for Tollie Red Kites in the main reserves area of the website and this community area, where you can post your photos, comments and questions. Eventually the Eyes to the Skies website will close and all the information will be moved across to these two new areas.
Enough about that, what about the birds! I hear you cry. We have continued to monitor the satellite tagged birds throughout the year and I can report the birds have been moving around the area. The good news being that one of the birds tagged in 2009, a female who goes by the name of Professor Feathers, successfully bred, though she had to go all the way to Angus to find a suitable mate. They raised one chick, but I hope there will be more to come. None of the other 2009 birds bred that we know of and the 2010 birds were still a bit too young to have bred this year. More birds were tagged this year so we will be able to report on their progress in time, though at this moment one is near Peebles whilst the rest have stayed closer to home.
At Tollie, the number of Kites coming to feed through the summer dropped off, as expected, but we did have one regular bird, a 2009 male with blue and pink wing tags with an inverted black triangle came to feed most days, along with a few occasional feeders. He soon earned the nickname ‘Old Faithful’, it would be nice to think that he was checking the site out for a prospective breeding area for next year, let’s hope he is successful in attracting a mate. Numbers are now increasing for the daily feeding sessions, and in addition to the Kites we are getting Buzzards and Ravens showing up, so some good aerobatic displays can been seen.
We managed to put a camera on to a Kite nest this year, albeit a little late in the season, the pictures were transmitted live to the North Kessock Tourist Information Office and the cafe at Tiso Outdoor shop in the Longman estate, Inverness, what more could you ask for, a new pair of walking boots, a nice cup of tea and Kite chicks. We hope to repeat this for next year but getting the camera in place earlier.
Well that’s enough from me for now, I will continue to keep you all updated through the blog. This is my first ever blog, so please be gentle with your comments. A blog this week, last week I downloaded my first app, whatever next a hoodie!