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It has been a busy time at Mull Eagle Watch - lots of visitors coming to see the white tailed eagles, here at Tiroran and at our other site, West Ardhu North West Mull Community Woodland  Fingal and Iona's chick at Tiroran is not far off fully grown and is now over 8 weeks old.  We think it is a male but are waiting on the DNA results to confirm this.  In the meantime he is doing some serious wing…

Last Saturday, we were celebrating the official opening of the South West Mull & Iona Development Trust Community Forest at Tiroran.  Mull Eagle Watch were delighted to be a part of this wonderful day and visitors were amazed to see a display from Iona, the female, having a grapple with the local buzzard who had flown a bit too close to the nest.  As well as enjoying the sunshine and the delights of the forest, visitors…

I am sat writing this blog on a balmy Sunday evening - the window is open and a blackbird is singing its heart out, along with the calls of curlews and oystercatchers mixed in with a cuckoo.  Its a wonderful time of year as new life is springing up all over the place.

Visitors to South West Mull & Iona Development Trust have been wowed by some fantastic flying displays from Fingal and Iona, as well as some tender…

(Photo courtesy Iain Erskine)

the egg (s) they have been incubating for the last 38 days have finally hatched!   Having endured persistent rain, Arctic blasts and a blizzard, Fingal and Iona have done an amazing job keeping the egg (s) dry and warm and are now feeding their young.  At this moment, we do not know how many chicks they have as they are still tiny and safely cocooned within the nest cup or under an adult bird…

What a difference a week makes!  Last week I was wearing short sleeves and this week I have so many layers on I look like I could be auditioning for the Michelin Man (some of you may remember him!).  Lovely blue skies and warm sunshine last week, have been replaced by a cold wind coming straight from the North Pole - thankfully it is still dry but it is positively Baltic.

Its been a busy week at Tiroran, Fingal and Iona…

As mentioned before, this year Mull Eagle Watch is located at 2 sites on Community Woodland, North West Mull Community Woodland and South West Mull & Iona Development Trust  The eagles at both sites are well into incubation and we are now onto countdown to the day when we await hatching.  

At Tiroran, Fingal and Hope continue to give our visitors great views but this week they haven't been the centre of attention…

Well that's our first week and Mull Eagle Watch is up and running.  It has been a great first week and a real pleasure to show our visitors these magnificent birds as well as telling their story.

It is exciting to be running 2 sites on Mull's community woodland -  one at North West Mull Community Woodland and one at South West Mull & Iona Development Trust.  Our bird feeders are up and it took 10 minutes for…

I am delighted to report that Mull Eagle Watch re-opens for business on Monday 4th April 2016. This year we are pleased to report that we will be running from 2 sites on Community Forest Land. The first site is at Tiroran, home to Fingal and Iona who many of you will already know and stars from the series The Hebrides. Fingal and Iona have made their home in the South West Mull & Iona Development Trust Our second…

The day dawned bright and clear and the sea surface of Loch Scridain was calm as I drove along the shore road to Tiroran Forest in Glen Seilisdeir, where our pair of white-tailed eagles nest. This was my last day of my second year of leading walks at Mull Eagle Watch for the RSPB. Iona and Fingal, as the female and male are named, have successfully raised another chick in 2014, their 12th year in this territory, and it…

After a weeks holiday I had probably the most enjoyable trip of the year today at Mull Eagle Watch with a great group of 20 visitors. The weather was overcast this morning and rain was forecast this afternoon, but it held off until after the walk when I was on the way home.

After giving an introduction about white-tailed eagles at the hide, we walked all the way to the end of the forest track without seeing a single bird…

The white-tailed eagle chick from the Glen Seilisdeir nest fledged safely back at the beginning of August and, after over a week spending much of its time on the ground in the clearing below the nest, is now to be seen soaring high above Tiroran Forest and the adjacent moorland.

Last week the visitors to each trip of Mull Eagle Watch had probably the most spectacular views of the year. We are now walking around 1 mile…

For 5 months this year I have been leading trips to watch the pair of white-tailed eagles that are nesting in Tiroran Forest, Glen Seilisdeir on the Isle of Mull. There have been some memorable moments during that time: our two adults mating in a tree after the female had laid her first egg, the first sight of the downy white head of the chick after it had hatched, food being brought to the chick on the nest, aerial battles…

The white-tailed eagle chick from the nest at Mull Eagle Watch, Glen Seilisdeir has fledged successfully. After several days of sitting on branches around the nest, when its wing flapping and teetering on the point of flying had drawn ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the visitors watching through telescopes and binoculars, it finally flew just 50 metres across the clearing into the top of another of the big conifers in the forestry…

Our white-tailed eagle chick at Glen Seilisdeir on the Isle of Mull was 11 weeks old yesterday and is very active on the nest indicating that it will be fledging very soon. It is already ‘branching out’: flapping and scrambling out onto the branches that radiate from the broken top of the sitka spruce tree where the birds have chosen to nest this year.

This can be the most dangerous time for the young eagle…

There has again been a great deal of good publicity for Mull as a wildlife tourism destination, mainly due to the white-tailed eagles. The BBC Springwatch crew were here filming a nest in the north of the island and covered the ringing of the offspring of one of our most famous birds ‘Itchy’, who is now nesting with its partner on the Scottish mainland. It has also been possible to watch one of the Mull white-tailed eagle…

Our new white-tailed eagle chick will be seven weeks old on Wednesday (25^th June).  We can see it moving around the nest, feeding and exercising its wings.  The overall plumage has darkened to the mottled brown colour it will remain for the first couple of years, very different from the pale head and breast feathers and white tail of the adults, which stand out from the dark green background of the spruce trees where the…

We now have a live webcam up and running on one of the white-tailed eagle nests on the Isle of Mull: http://scotland.forestry.gov.uk/visit/mull/mull-eagle-watch . This is the nest of ‘Sula’ and ‘Cuin’ a pair comprising a Mull-fledged bird and one of the Norwegian birds that was reintroduced to the East coast of Scotland. This pair have been featured regularly on BBC Springwatch this year along with some of the our otters…

Here we are into June already, and while Springwatch covers one of the more recent Isle of Mull pairs of white-tailed eagles (a Mull-fledged bird and a Scottish East coast release bird) the Mull Eagle Watch trips continue at Tiroran Forest in Glen Seilisdeir. 

 Our white-tailed eagle chick is 27 days old today and is growing rapidly.  Already its plumage is darkening and the parents are spending less and less time on the…

Iona and Fingal are having to pull out all the stops to bring in food for their offspring, so on most days we are seeing lots of activity around the nest.  We are still seeing other eagles soaring and flying over, including the non-breeding pair of golden eagles that appear to be looking to set up a territory nearby.  The chick(s) will be growing rapidly in the coming week and we should shortly be able to get clear views…

The sightings at Mull Eagle Watch just keep on getting better, especially now the adult white-tailed eagles are feeding their offspring. Fingal the male, particularly, is bringing in increasing numbers of small prey items including fish, gulls and greylag geese, while before the first egg hatched on 7th May, both adults were taking it in turns to incubate the eggs or feed on the carcase of a red deer up on the moorland…

Iona and Fingal, our pair of white-tailed eagles, are parents again.  On Wednesday morning this week I arrived at the Mull Eagle Watch hide early, hoping that there would be signs that the first egg had hatched, exactly 38 days after we saw the female hunker down on the nest to start laying.  As soon as I trained the telescope on the nest it was clear that both adults were there, their pale heads and huge yellow beaks visible…

Iona and Fingal, our pair of white-tailed eagles at Mull Eagle Watch, are being brilliant parents as we reach the end of the 38 incubation period (1st egg due to hatch 6th or 7th May). Iona is doing the larger share of nest-sitting: spending long hours sat keeping the eggs warm, occasionally standing up, tucking her talons into her feet to avoid damaging the eggs, and fussing over them to make sure they are incubating…

Our pair of white-tailed eagles, Iona and Fingal, have chosen a very sensible new nest site this year in the saucer-shaped broken top of a spruce tree. The weather has been warm and sunny most of the week, but several days have been quite windy too and last year’s nest, 25 metres up in an exposed location has been buffeted around. Even the regular roosting sites (where the adult bird that is not incubating the eggs sits…

Our female white-tailed eagle, Iona, is currently sitting on 2 or possibly three eggs on the pair’s new nest in the top of a Sitka Spruce tree at Glen Seilisdeir.  The first egg was laid late on 29^th March and so is now 20 days old, just over half way through the 38 day incubation period: if everything goes to plan the first egg will hatch on 6^th or 7^th May.

We have had a brilliant week of weather leading up to…

Mixed weather this week with great views of white-tailed eagles and golden eagles on sunny days and long periods of inactivity from the birds on wet days.

Our female, Iona, laid her first egg on 29th March, so that means it is 13 days old today – just another 25 days until it (hopefully) hatches. She has probably laid at least another egg, possibly 2, but we won’t know for sure until they hatch. Fingal, the male, has…