Roy's blog

2020 will of course be remembered as a very unusual year, full of sad memories for many people.  Even the worst of times have high points, though, and for us 2020 brought the chance to observe the fascinating lives of the two-year-old sea eagles on the Isle of Wight. When we started the project in 2019, we had done our homework and hoped that the young white-tailed eagles brought down from the north of Scotland would prosper there, and in southern England, thanks to plentiful sources of wild food.

This past year has justified those early hopes of ours. In the first year, the birds relied on carrion or food put out at the release site. How exciting it was, then, when Steve Egerton-Read, the project officer on the island, saw the first two birds start to catch grey mullet in the estuary.  This was a really important first step, because mullet – ideal food for eagles – are very plentiful around the coasts of the English Channel, and are easy to catch when they shoal in shallow waters. The eagles then added cuttlefish to their diet, catching them as they spawned in the shallows.  That had not been in our plan but showed that the future looked good.

In the meantime, two of the eagles headed north and summered in rabbit-rich valleys in the North York Moors. The female ‘mullet hunter’ also left the island and summered in the Moorfoot Hills in southern Scotland. By September she had returned to the Isle of Wight, to a big sigh of relief from us: her return was excellent evidence that the sea eagles were hefted to the translocation site.  On mainland England, the eagles were extremely good at finding areas full of rabbits.  The satellite transmitters proved to be extremely accurate, allowing Tim Mackrill and Steve Egerton-Read to work out easily the location of the birds and make really important contacts with people living on the ground.  

During these travels, we were delighted to receive enthusiastic reports from members of the public who had seen a sea eagle flying over their homes during lockdown. Analysis of the satellite data by Tim showed why the birds were rarely seen: well over 90% of their daily routine involved sitting quietly in big trees, just watching the world go by. 

This winter, too, has been very exciting. The two older birds on the Isle of Wight have followed flocks of gulls way out into the English Channel to catch sea fish, probably mainly bass on the hunt for sprats. As a boy I used to birdwatch at St Catherine’s Point, and would never have considered the possibility of looking out to sea to watch eagles catching fish and even eat the small ones in the air. 

Another seven young were translocated in the summer so the restoration of white-tailed eagles to England is progressing well.

Sadly, the osprey recovery project to Poole Harbour was quite different.  The pandemic prevented us from monitoring the Scottish nests effectively and, unable to be sure of collecting enough healthy young to translocate, we had to miss a year. To make matters worse, the first translocated male to return from Africa in 2019 failed to reappear to join his mate, CJ7, who originates from Rutland Water, waiting at their Poole Harbour eyrie. This was almost certainly due to the impacts of high pressure, which sat for a long period over the British Isles; it meant beautiful April weather for us, but dangerous conditions for migrants such as ospreys and swallows. The strong easterly winds and often poor weather over Iberia meant they risked getting swept out to sea to die.  In Scotland, where the annual survival of adult breeding ospreys is typically around 90%, larger numbers than usual failed to return to their nests and the same was reported in other Western populations. Our swallows, too, were scarce. 

We are looking now with enthusiasm towards the new season. Will the eagles currently wintering in Norfolk and Lincolnshire return to the Isle of Wight, and will the young ones entering their second year become proficient fishers, like the first cohort?  There is no doubt that they will already be watching and learning from the older eagles. The Poole Harbour osprey team will be expectantly scanning the skies for the return of blue CJ7, and will then face an anxious wait for a male to join her and start breeding.  Later in the summer, we plan to translocate another twelve young as part of that project, and hopefully a similar number of young white-tailed eagles will be flown from the north of Scotland to start new lives on the Isle of Wight.

These projects have taken place this year in an atmosphere of rewilding, a groundswell of feeling that we have to restore nature in a big way to help prevent the terrible consequences of biodiversity collapse and climate breakdown. We know that people find it inspiring that we can restore such a huge eagle to the skies of southern England, with a recognition that wild things don’t always have to live in wild places. We can only help to do these things with our excellent partners, working on ospreys with Birds of Poole Harbour and on white-tailed eagles with Forestry England, as well as with tree climbers and fieldworkers. And, of course, with the marvellous support of donors, large and small, who fund the fieldwork; we thank you all most sincerely for your donations and welcome encouragement. 

There is a still lot to do, so Tim Mackrill and I are always exploring new opportunities with new species. We would love to help restore the golden eagle to English skies and are looking at the next stages of projects we have already started. We are working, with partners, on a project idea to try to rejuvenate remnant populations of mountain hares, translocating them from a Scottish estate with large numbers, where they used to be shot, to two large mountains where hares have become isolated and probably inbred. It’s a small trial but could be important, just like our successful red squirrel translocations in the Highlands over a decade ago, which were the precursor to further projects in subsequent years. 

It’s encouraging to see the number of beaver projects underway in England but we are extremely disappointed with the situation in Scotland. The overriding evidence is that beavers are integral to the restoration of all nature in wetlands and have wider benefits in terms of the prevention of flooding downstream. At present, the Scottish Government sanctions either the killing of beavers or their live export to England. Both of these are unacceptable: we desperately need them here and should use any natural surplus to recolonise freshwaters throughout Scotland.  We see 2021 also as the year when we move forward with the reintroduction of lynx – the discussions on this iconic mammal have gone on long enough (25 years or more) and, in times of a dramatic recognition of the need for us to live better with nature, the return of the lynx to the Scottish Highlands would be as emblematic as that of the sea eagle to the Isle of Wight. We are here, ready to help make it a reality.

All best wishes for 2021 to all our friends and supporters.

Roy Dennis and Tim Mackrill

For someone old enough to remember the Icelandic Cod Wars, yesterday’s suggestion that we require four Royal Navy gunboats to protect our fishing boats and fisheries seemed to be from yester years’ diplomacy. Equally it’s incredible to me that fishermen could scupper a satisfactory deal with the European Union. Hopefully something will be resolved, at the last moment, but whatever transpires it’s important to separate, for the future ecological health of our seas and oceans, the requirements of the fish and marine ecosystems and the economic futures of fishermen and coastal communities.

Too often the debate seems to suggest that the fish in British waters belong to the fishermen. But in taking from nature, whether you harvest brambles, hunt red deer or trawl for haddock and cod, they are not your property until you’ve taken them.  In the first instance they are all part of the natural resources of our planet, yet at the present time there is a marked difference between the conservation management of wild species on land and those which live in the sea. Why, for instance, is the conservation of turtle doves so very different to the conservation of turbot? Not really surprising because the latter live in a habitats that are not in view to the general public. 

When a deal is thrashed out, for it’s too important to fail for both sides, it must be time to have a radical appraisal of the future of fisheries.  The British people have invested heavily in the costs of negotiations for a sector, which accounts for 0.1% of our economic activity.  Surely, when we regain ‘full control’ of our waters, it would be time to really look at the future of the fish and the marine environment. I’ve loved eating fresh fish from my boyhood catching bass and pout in the Solent, and I’ve admired the rugged individuality of the trawler men I’ve met in harbours and on remote islands, knowing that I could never have worked in such a hostile environment. Yet I do have reservations.  

 Anyone working in an extractive industry loves talk of sustainability but now with climate crisis and biodiversity collapse the urgent message is that it has to be more about the sustainability of the planet and not the sustainability of the fishing industry. Only if the first is attained can the second have a long-term future.  It has to be about how can we fish in a way that does not threaten the fish populations themselves but also does not damage the sea bed habitats, harm non-commercial species, from dolphins to flame shells, or leave a legacy of lost non-degradable nets.  

Clearly at least half the sea and oceans require to be protected areas with no fishing allowed, while inshore waters should be for local fishermen using methods that do not damage either local fish stocks nor their living marine environment. A start would be to have no bottom trawling inside a twelve-mile limit, with bays and sea lochs specially zoned for locals. The whole issue of fishing quotas requires taking back into national ownership and redistributed to local fishing communities based in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland. 

A few summers ago one of my Mediterranean friends was with me at a local harbour and asked me why there were no small fishing boats and why the fish served in the café was more likely to be deep frozen than caught overnight by artisanal means. He was even more horrified to learn that if we had a small fishing boat and we went to sea and caught three boxes of mackerel using hooks and lines, it would be illegal for us to sell them. As a Yorkshire fisherman once said ‘all the mackerel which swim past our coast belong to twelve Scotchmen!’  A quota system beyond belief.

When the Navy gunboats have returned to harbour, and the politicians have dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, the future of fishing in our waters must be completely reorganised. Winning a clash with the Dutch and French, does not solve the territorial animosity between our own fishermen, nor the threats to our marine biosphere.

It’s very strange not to be going out birding when the signs of the coming spring are beckoning, but at least I have more time these days to watch the going-ons in the garden. The stoat that lives in our roof has turned from white to brown during these first two weeks of our isolation, while Phoebe’s nest box, built at Scouts and finally fixed yesterday to the end of the Wendy house, has attracted a pair of great tits, this early morning taking ownership. As I type, though, I’m thinking of larger birds.

The young white-tailed eagles we released last August on the Isle of Wight have had a busy few weeks.  Despite occasional short wanderings, the four eagles had settled into a winter routine, three staying on the island and one having gone to live with red kites and buzzards in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Most of their time was spent just sitting in big trees watching the world go by and learning the life of the countryside, watching in particular other carrion eaters, for they lived off dead birds and small mammals, as well as dead deer and a fox. They may also have caught rabbits and a mallard and one may have hunted grey mullet in an estuary on the Solent. Four living successfully through their first autumn and winter, and on into April, is a success at the start of the reintroduction project.

Way back in 1968, on Fair Isle, three out of four young sea eagles which we released there survived the winter on the island, before, in spring, the two females departed. In those days they left and we had no idea where they had gone. They were, in fact, never seen again, but I always hoped that, when soaring several thousand feet above that remote Shetland island, they may have seen Norway and headed home. Much later, during the releases of the 1990s in Wester Ross, one young sea eagle, individually identified by its coloured wing-tags, flew north to Shetland and, years later, was proved to be breeding in Norway, so we know that at least one did make the long flight over the North Sea.

Now, of course, it’s all so different. Without leaving my desk I can check each eagle’s tiny satellite transmitter on my laptop. Within an hour, the data on each bird’s travels will appear on my screen in digital and map form. Despite my being restricted to home I can have a daily catch up on wild creatures, whose lives continue despite the tragedies affecting the world’s human population.  Until a month ago, we would generally find each eagle sticking closely to its usual routines, sometimes living for days within a few square kilometres of wooded countryside.

This past month, though, it’s started to be very different. My colleagues Tim and Steve are likely to phone me with the latest news before I’ve got online. One eagle made a big circular flight to Kent and back to the Isle of Wight; the Oxfordshire wintering bird headed west to the Forest of Dean and north to Stoke, and then to Rutland Water. One settled in Wiltshire and later did a day trip to the Somerset levels and back. Each day brought something new – see Tim’s summary of recent happenings here.

And then we got a report of the first immature sea eagle not from the reintroduction, sighted in Wiltshire and Hampshire. It had a metal ring and, with the help of Swedish colleagues, we established that it was probably from there. Other birds were then reported, from Buckinghamshire to Kent to East Anglia – there was a small influx of mainland European wanderers. We were very grateful to people who sent in photos, as we can use them to identify individuals, looking for nicks in their big flight feathers or other distinguishing features.

We always hope that one or more might be attracted to join the Isle of Wight birds, but we also have to accept that these ‘new’ ones might encourage the island birds to wander. We’d like to hear of sightings, without encouraging anyone to leave home base, for these are eagles that fly over towns and villages on their journeys. Great photos have been already been taken from suburban gardens. Please report sightings here.

Eagle behaviour such as this, and that of the bird which returned to Norway, raises a fascinating question: from what distance can one large eagle see another, soaring on a clear day?  It looks as if they do go and look for – and maybe follow – each other. I remember how one golden eagle, which I was satellite tracking in Scotland, flew 40 km from Angus to Tentsmuir in Fife to check out a pair of white-tailed eagles, before tracking west to Perthshire.  On Saturday, we saw similar behaviour from young sea eagles. One flew from Rutland Water to the south Humber and, yesterday, on to the North York moors, while another flew from Berkshire to roost overnight just 5 miles from the Humber bird, then also flying north to the North York moors.  Were they alone? Or were they following a wanderer from over the sea? It’s a shame that people cannot see them but checking their progress on GoogleEarth is far more than I could do with those first errant Fair Isle eagles.  We are staying home, but they are free to fly, and we can follow them as they go.

All of the young White-tailed Eagles have wandered widely since late March. Check out their recent movements here.