A few years ago, one of the young golden eagles that I was satellite tracking spent two nights at a wooded crag in the Scottish Highlands. I knew this crag as an ancient nest site for golden eagles, which featured on my OS maps of the 1970s but which I had never known occupied. Nor had any of the locals and I think it must have been a record from the middle of the last century or earlier.
I promised the people that own this land that I would come some day to explore the possibility of rebuilding the nest, because golden eagles prefer to use big old nests than start their own. Today was that day, the last day of our beautiful Indian summer which has given us day after day of the most beautiful weather, some little compensation for the miserable weather of this past summer. They had organised an expert rock climber to come with us and at mid-morning the small team from the estate were busy collecting eight bundles of dead sticks in the woods – once I had explained the sort of sticks that eagles prefer to use to build nests. An all-terrain argocat took our equipment and the sticks reasonably close to the crags.
With the estate keeper I walked to the hillside opposite the line of crags and viewed it with binoculars. I could see two places which looked possible as ancient nest sites, so we carried all our gear along the valley to the bottom of the crags. The climber found secure places to anchor the ropes above the cliff, and then clicked me on the double ropes so I could abseil down to the best ledge. He followed closely behind.
When we got there I was amazed to find the remains of an ancient eagles nest, tucked in under a superb overhanging rock. Most of the nest had been overtaken by moss and heather over the decades, and a small conifer obscured the front of the ledge, making it no longer suitable for eagles.
Ancient remains of nest
It was really encouraging to find this evidence and it meant that our task had a real opportunity of being successful. When we arrived at the cliffs some of the team saw an eagle soaring about half a mile to the north, another good omen for our day’s work.
After cutting down the tree on the edge of the ledge, and clearing away most of the moss and debris, it was time to start hauling bundles of sticks up to the nest ledge. The team below clipped each bundle onto the end of our rope, the climber pulled it up and then I arranged the sticks into a big nest. As we built it up, we filled the centre with moss and then with several sacks of dried peat and earth to make a big solid eyrie – well over a metre in diameter and 35 cms high. Finally I decorated the centre of the eyrie with a few sprays of wood rush. This is a favourite plant for eagles to line their nests.
The rebuilt eagle eyrie
The whole purpose was to create a big obvious nest on an ideal crag in a quiet undisturbed part of a Highland estate, where the owners would be proud to have a pair of breeding eagles. This big nest should be easily seen by passing eagles, looking for a home range, and they would think it had been built by a pair of eagles and was now ready to be taken over. It’s going to be an exciting time to see if sub-adult eagles find the nest, decide that they like it and finally decide that they would like to breed there. If they do then our day’s efforts will have been worth it and will contribute to golden eagle conservation in the Scottish Highlands. On top of that, it was just great fun to be out doing something so practical with a group of friends on a fine October day.
