Growing season…

Sunday 28th May 2017

Eagle parents working hard at West Ardhu (North West Mull Community Woodland)
I’m so impressed with our West Ardhu eagles and their parenting skills! Our two chicks/eaglets are now about 31 days old – just over four weeks into their lives already and the adults, Hope and Star have been doing wonderfully. Throughout the incubation the female, Hope (Yellow C) spent the majority of the 38 days on the nest, with respite offered only occasionally by the male, Star. With white-tailed eagles the female tends to do around 70% or more of the incubation which makes sense as she is the bigger and more defensive adult. We were then thrilled to announce the successful hatch and have been enthralled with their progress since. Their success featured online and in the Press & Journal with a phone scope image I managed to take of the tiny chicks in the nest (under SNH license).

Growth spurt
The youngsters are growing incredibly fast and we’re now getting great views of them through our brilliant Viking Optics telescopes. One chick is definitely larger and more developed; it will have hatched ahead of the smaller one, giving it an advantage if things become tough, but at the moment both are looking strong and healthy.

Hopefully in another few weeks the eaglets will be ringed in the nest by the ringing team. We use large coloured rings along with the standard British Trust for Ornithology ring- these will remain on the eagles for life – the hope with the coloured rings is that we’ll get some records of movements around the country but monitoring each individual eagle isn’t as critical now the West Coast with a more established population. Eagles from the Irish and the Scottish East Coast are usually still being wing tagged – the re-introductions are more recent and are still gaining a foothold in these areas and illegal raptor persecution is still a substantial threat.

Food, glorious food!

Prey is being brought into the nest/eyrie regularly by both the male and female, although you need keen eyes to spot them as they drop into the nest with incredible speed – probably hoping the local hooded crows, buzzards and ravens don’t catch onto the potential of a free meal. From our vantage point it’s quite difficult to identify which prey items they’re bringing in but we’re sure rabbits have featured. The pair’s territory covers Loch Cuin and the coastal stretch toward Langamull and Croig so it would be safe to assume that seabirds and fish will be on the menu too. White-tailed eagles are opportunistic and have an extensive list of possible prey items – all of which is caught in their large feet and talons.

Darting Dragonflies

We’re enjoying increased activity at our viewing hide with the adults working hard to feed their eaglets, but at the same time we often enjoy a variety of other species nature offers. We see buzzards on numerous occasions throughout each day – often in flight alongside the eagles which gives us a great size comparison. We’ve been hailed by the call of the cuckoo recently too and have marveled at their incredible complexity and evolution in action. Other bird species have included grey wagtail, wren, tree pipit, willow warbler, sparrowhawk and the occasional juvenile golden eagle passing through.

In the last few days our local insect life has taken to the wing and dragonflies are hawking about in the sunny woodland. The two species I’ve spotted so far are four-spotted chaser and golden-ringed. The female golden-ringed dragonfly is longest British insect! Large red damselflies are also gracing our skies, and are a beautifully delicate. We’ve also recorded orange tip and green-veined white butterflies, particularly enjoying the cuckoo flowers along the forest track. We’re on the look out for the stunning common blue butterflies which will be on the wing now.

Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon but in the meantime watch out for news from Tiroran Community Forest, our eagles Iona and Fingal and our RSPB Ranger Meryl on her blog.

Rachel : )