Roy's blog

Bringing hope in troubled times

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.

Both G324 (pictured) and G274 have continued to catch fish in the sea off the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight during the winter. They sometimes eat their catch on the wing (photo by Andy Butler)

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.

CJ7 waiting for a male at Poole Harbour

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

G274 has become adept at catching fish around the coasts of the Isle of Wight (photo by Ainsley Bennett)

Fishy business – in an uncertain world

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.

Taking ownership

The Isle of Wight Sea Eagles featured in two things that arrived on my laptop today. The first was a video that Steve, the sea eagle project officer, had been given by a fisherman fishing from his boat south of the Isle of Wight.  Looking towards Blackgang cliffs from the Channel it showed a big cloud of gulls milling around after fish over the glassy sea and then one of the eagles flying through them and diving down to snatch fish from the water. This wasn’t a case of perching on a cliff or tree and patiently waiting for a fish to swim in range. This was a conscious decision to fly out over the open sea to hunt fish, encouraged by the swarming gulls.

G274 regularly catches fish around the coast of the Isle of Wight (photo by Ainsley Bennett)

The tracks from the eagles’ satellite transmitters are also showing us their flights out to catch salt-water fish, especially in calmer weather. When they were younger they started to catch grey mullet in estuaries around the Island, but now the older ones, enjoying their second winter, are much bolder and capable of fishing in the open sea.  Even eating small ones while in flight. Last week one of them, G274, flew two-thirds the way across the Solent to fish and then returned to the Island. This behaviour is very important for the future because fresh fish is excellent food to feed any future ‘islander’ eaglets in their nests. 

The second was details of how to buy packs of a lovely Christmas card featuring one of the sea eagles in flight over the Isle of Wight with the distinctive Needles Lighthouse in the distance. It is the result of a competition for young artists organised by the Ventnor Exchange’s Brave Island programme. The winner is Charlotte Parr-Burman and her card design is beautiful as well as very evocative of one of eagles looking out into the Channel for fishing opportunities. And the proceeds from the Christmas cards raise money for the Ventnor Foodbank. Packs of cards can be purchased at their shop in Ventnor or online here.

Charlotte’s winning Christmas card design

For the reintroduction team it’s really great to see how the sea eagles are becoming part of the Island’s life and times. We have also been amazed at the enjoyment expressed by many on the Isle of Wight and across England who have seen one of the huge birds fly over them during lockdown. I love it that communities are taking such interest and ownership in having the sea eagles back home after two centuries of absence.

Happy Christmas and wishing all a better 2021

The Bearded Vulture in the Peak District – a doomed wanderer or an icon of the urgency for rewilding

I’ve just read my latest copy of British Birds where it is reported that the bearded vulture in the Peak District might be repatriated. It says that any intervention would be a last resort but the bird will be returned safely to its ‘home reintroduction area’. It’s not ringed, radio-tagged or marked so is not a freshly released bird from one of the reintroduction projects in the Alps, the Massif Central or Andalusia, so where in fact is its home? So the main question seemed to be about the authenticity of it being a wild bird, just like the one that visited the UK in May 2016. It’s matter of whether you can count it on your British life list, but that hasn’t discouraged the hundreds of birders that have ventured into the hills and enjoyed seeing it.

The bearded vulture has captivated birders in the Peak District (photo by Indy Kiemel Greene)

But why should it be repatriated if it’s a wild bird?  For such a long-distance wanderer it could find its own way back to wherever it came from if it is in good condition, has found enough food and decided it did not wish to stay.  So why is there not enough food, even though it follows other scavengers, such as buzzards and ravens, to the remains of a few dead sheep?  And if there were enough food, why not leave it in case another bearded vulture might turn up next May, and vultures might (again) breed in Britain? In fact, instead of repatriation why not bring in some others from mainland Europe to join it? For at some stage the very successful bearded vulture projects will mean the present range becomes full and young ones will have to find new breeding places. What a marvellous prospect.

Worldwide, vultures have had hard times. In India and Pakistan the common three vulture species crashed from millions to 20,000. The cause was poisoning through ingesting the veterinary drug, diclofenac, commonly used there to treat cattle. Research and conservation has stemmed the decline. Nearer home in southern Europe vultures suffered from the 1970s EU regulations requiring the removal of dead farm animals from open land, but fortunately sense prevailed and derogations allowed for ‘vulture feeding places’ or ‘restaurants’ to be established. The vultures bounced back but in Britain we don’t even see that there’s a problem here. The countryside is too tidy!

The problem is that modern humans have broken the ancient food chains whereby large scavengers cleaned up the dead in nature. Nowadays by law, except in exceptional circumstances, farmed livestock have to be collected and removed, while the large predators which killed wild deer, and left as much as they ate, are long gone. And life for carrion eaters, from vultures to burying beetles, is nearly made impossible. In my new book, Cottongrass Summer, I’ve written of the appalling impacts of removing biomass and bones from the environment. 

As a start, no carcasses should be removed from nature reserves or designated sites. Deer hunters must use copper bullets to prevent lead poisoning. And the establishment of ‘raptor feeding places’ should be extended from the successful red kite locations that have been so appreciated by birders. I’ve recommended that several ‘carrion restaurants’ should be set up on the south coast to attract white-tailed eagles, both the newly reintroduced ones and the increasing wintering birds from the mainland. Specially fenced enclosures of a couple of acres, to exclude dogs and foxes, where local farmers could leave dead livestock would be a boon for nature. It would start another process in essential rewilding.

In fact, a few enterprising farmers could set up eco-businesses where birders and photographers, in hides, could enjoy the close up spectacles of sea eagles, buzzards, ravens and even white storks. It works in Spain and Portugal. And then vultures cruising the coasts of France might see the thermalling carrion-eaters and cross the English Channel to investigate.  It’s not too far either, for vultures regularly cross the Strait of Gibraltar, while in November 2008 over a hundred griffon vultures flew a much greater over-sea journey from the Spanish mainland to the Balearic Islands, and some stayed to breed on Majorca. The Peak District bearded vulture is an icon of that rewilding future, so for goodness sake start a vulture feeding station immediately. It is a National Park and this should be a priority. To allow it to starve would be irresponsible.

The Peak District bearded vulture is the second to be recorded in the UK (photo by Indy Kiemel Greene)

Encouraging golden eagles to return to ancient haunts

Trees for Life put out a press release today about golden eagles successfully breeding at their Dundreggan reserve for the first time in living memory. The news item went worldwide and I was interviewed on Sky News this morning and talked with the Radio Canada this evening. It a long interesting story, which I partly covered in my blog of 5th October 2015 but it’s worth re-telling. 

On 30th June 2010, I left home at 10.30am and collected David Clark and Ryan Munro, from Alladale Wilderness, on my drive north to the RSPB Forsinard Reserve in the Flow Country

The manager, Norrie Russell, took us by argocat some of the way and then we walked across the hills to an eagle nest with two big young. The reason for the trip was to fit satellite transmitters, as part of our eagle studies. We ringed both young before returning them to their eyrie. Transmitter 57107 was fitted to the young male, the female’s was 57106. We had a great walk back in the evening sun and finally I reached home at midnight after a wonderful day’s fieldwork.

One of the juvenile eagles tagged by Roy in 2010

The male eaglet left his parents in October and ranged widely but the female stayed with her parents until after the New Year. During his wanderings he arrived at Dundreggan on the 17th November 2010 and roosted there overnight in a cliff, before departing north the following day. This is part of Glen Moriston, which runs north and west of Loch Ness. It was an area I knew well in the late 1970s and 1980s when I monitored golden eagles in the Highlands. In those days this glen though was a black spot for illegal persecution so the ancient breeding sites were unoccupied. By 2008 Dundreggan estate had been purchased by Trees for Life during the time I was one of their volunteer board members.

During the collection of satellite data from over twenty eagles I noted that many chose to visit long abandoned nesting areas, and this led to me suggesting the idea of building a nest on the new reserve with the Alan Featherstone Watson, the founder of Trees for Life. On 5th October 2015 I went to Dundreggan and explained to the staff how to build an eagle nest before we headed for the location. Alan had asked a local climber Ewan to come with his climbing gear and after fixing ropes, he and I abseiled into the best ledge. To my amazement the overgrown ledge contained the ancient stick remains of an eagle eyrie, probably from the middle of the last century. I cleared the ledge of vegetation, including a small conifer that was blocking access, and then we hauled up bundles of sticks tied to our rope by the group of helpers below. Arranging the sticks and adding moss and grass resulted in a good starter eyrie for prospecting eagles. 

Roy and Ewan building the eagle nest on 5th October 2015
The completed nest

Doug Gilbert, manager of the reserve, reported an eagle over the cliff that winter but it was not until last month that I heard the exciting news that a pair was rearing a single eaglet in our nest. He reported that they had built a big structure on top of our original nest and it’s very likely they had started taking an interest in the ancient breeding site last year. 

This is an exciting development and demonstrates that eagles will successfully return to ancient nesting places when illegal persecution is ceased. Sometimes by their own actions and sometimes with help. Five years may seem a long time to wait for successful breeding but we have built nests in other good places and are still waiting for them to be occupied. For Trees for Life it’s an accolade to their management of their rewilding reserve and there’s every likelihood that this pair will decide to stay and become regular successful breeders. The interest today has been very encouraging and it’s given us a chance to point out that it’s part of the ecological restoration of degraded lands: an icon of restoring nature. And for fun it’s created amusing headlines – my son-in-law Whatsapped me to say he liked the quote “an octogenarian conservationist dangling from a rope”.   

Can you help us?

We will be building more Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle and Osprey nests this winter. If you would like to help us with this important conservation work, then please consider making a donation to the Foundation by clicking on the donate button below. All support is very gratefully received.

My new book Cottongrass Summer is published 16th July

This spring and summer has seen the most spectacular display of cottongrass sedge in the Scottish Highlands – whole vistas of snowy cottongrass heads blowing in the wind. Here near my home the moors, which suffered a severe fire and were blackened last spring were respledent in white, as though a late snowfall had covered the ground. In the forest bogs the scene was equally beautiful and one day in July I stopped to photograph acres and acres of white on the hill road from Altnaharra. Locals have all been talking about it and trying to recall early years of such beauty. My new book starts with a chapter about the importance of cottiongrass in northern Scotland and explains how the plant can be an indicator of ecological renewal or the opposite of over-grazed land. I am delighted with the production of the book by Sara Hunt of Saraband Books and also by the first reviews.

Specially signed copies can be purchased here and may be paid for by bank transfer, cheque or paypal. 

I hope you enjoy it and if you do please buy one for a friend.

My 60th Anniversary of Ospreys

Today, 8th April 2020, is the 60th anniversary of my first ever sighting of an osprey. I was a week into my new work as warden at the RSPB’s Operation Osprey at Loch Garten in the Scottish Highlands. Each day we waited for the pair’s arrival after their previous year’s successful rearing of three young. It was a very exciting time, but also an anxious one, for this was the only nesting pair.   8th April was cold and grey, and it was raining on my early visit to the still-empty nest. I returned to the forward hide in the early afternoon and checked the eyrie with my binoculars, then scanned the old trees dotted across the peat mosses. And there he was, perched on a branch of an ancient pine, preening his wet feathers. To me he was fantastic – he had just winged in from a 3,500-mile migration flight from Africa. I’ve just checked my diary – ‘after an hour of preening, he carried a dead stick to the nest at 3.35pm, and in quick succession five more, snapped in flight from nearby trees. He rearranged his old nest before leaving to fish at 3.50pm’. I hurried back to our camp to phone the news to George Waterston at the RSPB in Edinburgh.

The nest at Loch Garten

The female arrived ten days later and they went on to rear two more young for the fledgling osprey population in Scotland. They were seen that year by thousands of visitors to Loch Garten – one of the world’s first public viewing sites of a rare breeding bird. It was also the start of my life’s involvement with these beautiful fish-eating raptors, which have contributed so greatly to my enjoyment and involvement in nature. This afternoon I had planned to visit Loch Garten and walk up that long familiar track to view the ancient nest tree – now long-dead but standing, with the present osprey eyrie in the tree next door. But Loch Garten is out-of-bounds in these worrying days of the pandemic. I’m fortunate that I will likely see an osprey passing our house today from one of the local eyries. Early this morning, on my laptop, courtesy of a webcam, I watched the female on a nest at Poole Harbour. Reminding me of the male at the Loch Garten nest in April 1960, she was staring up into the skies looking for her mate, hopefully the male which she met last summer, coming in en route from West Africa. He’s a bird we translocated from the Scottish population to Poole Harbour in 2017; she, in turn, is descended from ospreys moved to Rutland Water from nests in northern Scotland.

Once we get an all clear and are free again to travel, I’ll make a pilgrimage to that special Scots pine at Loch Garten.

Meanwhile, watch out for more osprey news on our first podcast of 2020 – coming soon! You can listen to all our previous podcasts here. 

Spring in uncertain times

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.

 

Catching-up before Christmas

I’m sorry I haven’t written a blog for three months, but this past autumn saw me very busy at my desk and I’m delighted to say that I’ve finished writing two books. Collins is publishing the first next summer and it’s a big, exciting book about all the reintroductions, translocations and species recovery projects that I’ve been involved in over the last six decades: sea eagles, red kites, ospreys, red squirrels and a range of other birds and mammals. It’s been fun to rake through my diaries, field notebooks, papers and photos to tell an intriguing story of successes and, sometimes, failures. The shorter book is called Cottongrass Summer and is being published by Saraband. It’s fifty-two essays about nature conservation seen from the inside in an uncertain world. Much of the time, as I wrote, I also watched the antics of the local red squirrels collecting nuts in the hazel trees below me, often burying some in the garden. From the same window, I now see a beautiful ermine (white stoat) nosing around the woodpile. More often she raids the bird table for scraps, in fact she’s surprisingly vegetarian for a stoat. We also hear her footsteps, for she lives in the roof space of our front room.

Looking back on the summer it was really exciting that we could start the reintroduction of white-tailed eagles to the Isle of Wight and also have a really successful third-year with the osprey translocation to Poole Harbour. Of course it’s the birds themselves which are markers of success. I’ve just looked at the satellite data and seen that three of the sea eagles are living on the Isle of Wight and one is in Oxfordshire. Two of the eagles on the island, a male and female from different locations, are always together and acting like a young pair. If they survive they could easily stay together to breed, but it’ll be a four-year wait – fingers crossed. It’s been great to watch people in southern England learn about sea eagles in their midst; despite their massive size, they are so unobtrusive. Perching in trees after a meal is what they do most of the day, but sometimes they soar and fly in view. It’s been great to see the beautiful photographs that some photographers have sent in – especially the pair flying over the Solent with the female carrying a small branch. They’ve also been making life more interesting for the local buzzards, crows and jackdaws, and in Oxfordshire the sight of a sea eagle followed by a gang of red kites is something special. Let’s hope the eagles are as successful as the kites we reintroduced.

Two of the Isle of Wight eagles earlier this autumn – male G2-74, and female G3-24, have spent much of the past three months together (photo by Nick Edwards)

With the Dorset ospreys, I was thrilled to bits when the guys from Birds of Poole Harbour reported the return of one of the young males translocated in 2017. At just two years old he was an early returner and he was in luck, because a young female osprey was summering at Poole Harbour and had been visiting osprey nests built in the area by the team. They stayed together for the rest of the summer and also took a great interest in the eleven young ospreys, translocated from the Scottish Highlands, once they had been released. This female had behaved in the same way with the previous years’ young and I’m sure these interactions are important for establishing new populations. The 2019 cohort were released in great condition, which should have helped them migrate all the way to West Africa. It was sad that a fox killed one a few days before it was due to leave, but that’s nature. Unlike the sea eagles, the ospreys disappear for the winter, and it’ll be very exciting to see if the pair survive their migrations and return next spring. That would be a landmark, and we should see other translocated young return to Dorset.

LS7 and CJ7 on an artificial nest at Poole Harbour this summer. We hope they will return to breed in 2020.

Both projects are aimed at restoring iconic species to the lands where they once lived but, as ever, I love the way these projects bring together great teams of people. The yearly sea eagle project starts with those who monitor nests in Scotland and let me know of suitable young. Then it’s collecting time, with Tim, Ian and Fraser climbing trees and cliffs, followed by the safe transport of the eaglets to the Isle of Wight, where our colleagues in Forestry England, Steve and Leanne, take over, helped by a group of enthusiastic volunteers. With the ospreys the southern part of the project is carried out by Paul and Brittany of Birds of Poole Harbour, again helped by a local dedicated team of helpers. This year my wife, Moira, has produced twelve podcasts of our fieldwork – it’s great listening. You can listen on our website here, or subscribe/download on all major podcast platforms.

Our Foundation receives some very superb support from donors to carry out these exciting projects but to maintain our vision we need donations – large and small. As a starter in 2020 we aim to translocate 12 young sea eagles to the Isle of Wight and 12 young ospreys to Dorset. Please help if you can, either by writing to us direct or by donating on our website.

This week we can help you if you are still thinking what to buy a friend for Christmas. Why not send us a charitable donation in their name? We’ll do the rest. Click here to make a gift donation and order your card.

Wishing you a Happy Christmas and an excellent New Year

Roy

So far, so good…

Last week, I visited the white-tailed eagle release area where Forestry England and the Foundation are embarking on a project to restore the sea eagle as a breeding bird to the Isle of Wight and the English Channel coast. The first six young have thrived since they were brought south from Mull, Skye and Wester Ross. Of course I had received frequent CCTV footage and photos of them growing up since they arrived there on 25th June; but I was delighted to see them in outstanding condition and ready for release. The hacking cages built by Pete Campbell, his metal work team and Dick Milner, the joiner, were the best I’ve seen. Daily supplies of plentiful fish and dead rabbit carefully threaded through a hatch in the back of the cage by Steve Egerton-Read, the project officer, meant that they young had grown and their plumage was perfect. And they had not seen a single person, important for keeping them truly wild birds.

Continuous monitoring was achieved through a superb CCTV system in each cage and on the roof, which allowed Steve and the team of volunteers to monitor progress. On Tuesday 20th we gathered at the site, with a contingent from Scotland, – Ian Perks, Dave Sexton and me, – joining Tim Mackrill, Steve and the team for the important step to catch up each bird so that our highly skilled raptor vet, John Chitty, could examine each bird before release. He passed all of them fit and ready for release, and also collected tiny blood samples to confirm sexes and for future DNA studies. Then we fitted small satellite transmitters to each one so that their movements post-release could be tracked. At this age these are now powerful birds, with very sharp bills and talons, and require careful but firm handling. By afternoon all was completed and they were back in their temporary homes.

Each of the birds were given a health check by vet John Chitty (right) prior to release.

It was a 4.45am start next day so that the team could lower the cage front door in darkness, which allows the young to come out in their own time when first light starts to illuminate the release area. Finally the big Mull female came out and perched on the front door, bouncing along the branch from side to side. She looked around but was slow to fly, so the male came out in a hurry and beat her to the first flight, which was into the nearby wood. Next morning and another pre-dawn start to release the other four young eagles. It’s a time of change for those who have looked after and watched over them for two months, and a time to wonder about the massive leap of releasing young sea eagles back to the Isle of Wight after an absence of 240 years.

The successful release was covered by a BBC crew and will feature soon on the ‘The One Show’. There has been tremendous interest and support for the project, and we have started to produce podcasts of our fieldwork that are now available on many of the podcast platforms. Our latest podcast covers the release of the eagles last week. To listen, click the link below.

Before release, we were not sure what they would do – would they stay nearby or would they just fly off in all directions and distances? In fact, they all stayed close by, within a few kilometres and three remained in the immediate vicinity. Those ones started to return to the feeding platform and the top of the cages where Steve placed fresh fish each day after dark, so as not to disturb them. Most of the time they perched in trees at the edge of woods, spending their time watching what was happening in their new world. For such a huge bird they can be surprisingly unobtrusive, and despite many reports of people seeing them, we were able to confirm from their satellite tracks that only a couple of people would have seen them in the first days. We are keeping the release location confidential for the welfare of the birds, but as they start to disperse, we’ll be posting regular updates on their movements. We also hope it will be possible to set-up a public eagle viewpoint once the settlement patterns of the birds are understood.

We are very grateful to two generous donors, who have allowed us to get the project underway and to employ a full-time project officer. We are very careful with funds for these projects do cost money and as well as general support donations which come in through our website or mail, we would welcome help with paying for certain equipment. For example someone to sponsor the top-class CCTV equipment (£11,000) or the satellite transmitters at £1200 each and with the white-tailed eagles being so good at hiding in woods a thermal imager for the project would be extremely useful. You can make a donation or get in touch via the support us page if you would like to help this ground breaking project.

Two of the eagles perched together after release last week. Both of these birds are females (photo by Tim Mackrill)

The released eagles are now growing in confidence on the wing (photo by Steve Egerton-Read)