While Dave is on holiday, here is a short update on the eagle chicks from the RSPB Data Unit. We’re the people who process the satellite data from the eagles (with the help of Roy Dennis) and assist Dave with updating the map on the web site.
The first piece of exciting news to report is that Breagha is the first of our two youngsters to make the hop from Mull to the mainland! The latest data we have shows that she made the journey on October 17 and was still there on October 18, so it was an overnight stay. In fact, it actually seems that both eagles are regularly not coming back to the nest to roost as they were before, but are taking longer and longer trips away.
Before she crossed the water, Breagha had been following in her brother’s footsteps (so to speak!) and had been travelling all over the island, including the Ross of Mull. The tracking data also shows that both chicks were near Loch Scridain around 5 and 6 of October, and actually crossed paths at one point, though probably several minutes apart.
If you’ve been following their journey on the map yourself, one thing you’ll notice now is that it has become a lot less cluttered. When we started this project, we just kept adding the birds’ current positions, but the map was becoming difficult to read because they were staying in the Loch Frisa area so much. Now we are only going to show the last 15 positions from each bird, and we’re hoping to soon put labels on these positions so that you can see exactly when the birds were in a certain place. It’s still a tricky business, as on a cloudy day, the tracker on the birds’ backs doesn’t get enough solar power to transmit many locations. The good news is that on a clear day, we get hourly positions from dawn to dusk. Just one more reason to hope for a sunny autumn! Let’s hope that we get some good data in the weeks ahead.
Stay tuned for more updates, and to see if Mara follows his sister to the mainland.
Valerie