One of the young birds released in August last year from east Scotland has recently been making a guest apperance at a selection of RSPB reserves in North East Scotland! This individual with red wing tags and the letter "A" has recently spent time on RSPB Loch of Strathbeg, and last week at Broubster Leans in Caithness. "Red A" who is a young male was joined at Strathbeg by another young bird "Red Z"- a female released in the same year. Since then, Red A has been spending time at Broubster Leans, but without his companion.
Since his release, he has made some spectacular journeys. He is the first east coast white-tailed sea eagle to be spotted on the isle of Arran where he spent time in October last year. He then ventured further west to Campbeltown before heading to Loch of Strathbeg.
Quite the adventurer!
Below is a photo of Red A taken on Arran by Brian Couper. A good example of scale!
The East Scotland Sea Eagle team has trippled in size over the past month with new recruits Miriam Kayoueche-Reeve and Heather Richards joining me at the RSPB Tayside and Fife office!
Miriam is the new Sea Eagle infomation officer, and her post has been funded by Rural Tayside and Fife LEADER. Her role is to promote the east coast sea eagle to the tourism industry and to attend lots of events over the busy summer period to raise awareness of sea eagles in east Scotland. Look out for Miriam at up and coming events such as The Railway Farm market http://www.highlandlightrailway.co.uk/events.php.
Heather is the new sea eagle project assistant and will be a great help to me over this busy time as I prepeare for this year's chicks to arrive. Her post is funded by both HLF and LEADER. So far she has been helping prepare release aviaries for the chicks and following the movements of the older sea eagles and was very excited to see one of our awesome birds down at Tentsmuir point!
A big welocme to them both, and I hope they enjoy their new roles in this exciting project :-)
After managing to sneak off my radio tracking radar no more than a week after being released in Fife, an old friend has finally made an apperance!
On the eve of the day that Ireland were to take on Wales in the first game of this year's 6 nations tournament, the Irish white-tailed eagle of north Aberdeenshire fame was spotted at Drumpellier Country Park in Lanarkshire!! Everyone is pleased to see that despite everything he's been through he's doing great, and appears to be making his way slowly but surely west...back to the Emerald Isle maybe?
Thank you to the rangers Jamie and Jackie at Drumpellier for getting in touch with the sightings and for taking some great pictures!
Keep your eyes peeled if you live in this area!
After spending just over a month in the care of SSPCA, the sea eagle that was rescued from the north Aberdeenshire coast has finally been re-released into the wild. This time, successfully! It was decided to release the bird in Fife in a brief window of good weather on Tuesday.
The bird had been carefully washed several times to remove the grease from his feathers which prevented him from taking off at the previous attempted release at Loch of Strathbeg. He is now in far better condition thanks to SSPCA and flew beautifully from the release site in Fife-he even gave us a fly-by a few minutes later just to show off! He's a very strong bird and I'm sure he will make great progress. His radio transmitter was reattached prior to release allowing me to keep an eye on him for as long as he stays in the area.
The wing tags used in Ireland are slightly different to the ones used here in Scotland-they have a different colour on each wing and you can read the tag from underneath aswell which is quite useful! Keep your eyes peeled for this bird in the skies of Fife!
This photo was taken last year in Ireland by Dick Coombes at Cape Clear.
Rumour has it that when there's a sea eagle at Vane Farm, the staff in the cafe will put a lovely chocolate sea eagle design on the top of your cappuccinos! Well worth a visit to Vane's cafe for that, and the coffee is fantastic too!