Golden Eagles

Sometimes there is a strange syncronicity in events. Just last week I had my first chance to see a Golden Eagle, well two as it was a pair. I think people must think I have suffered a facial injury as I have not stopped grinning from ear to ear. Then yesterday, the media were running the story of a report by Scottish Natural Heritage about the decline of the Golden Eagles.

Now to make it clear for my overseas reader, we do have strong laws to protect wildlife in this country, and Golden Eagles are listed as schedule one protected under the wildlife and countryside act 1980 There are also other laws that protect them, but the reasons for the decline in Scotland is that Game Keepers are poisoning them. Not just the Eagles, but all birds of prey.

While organisations like the RSPB and others investigate this and support the police, often it comes down to lack of direct evidence linking the crime to the person(s) involved. One of the aspects that has been clear to me from listening to and reading these stories over the years, is that the Police the RSPB et al know who is responsible. I just wish that organisations like the Country Landowners Association would take their heads out of their A*@#s and stop covering up and supporting their members who are guilty of these crimes.

This is a problem that's not unique to Scotland, living on the county Durham and Northumberland border, here we should have Golden Eagles here. The habitat is perfect for them, but they are absent because of the actions of a few.

Again there is serendipity in action here, as just the other day I described an incident where I took a local villager to see the Badgers. Then talking to a tree again, don't worry my psychiatrist knows about this, she commented that perhaps it is better to not disclose where the wildlife is as some people seem to lack respect for our planets fellow inhabitants, it could be that she is right. While I would love to tell everyone where they can see beautiful creatures, the reality is that not everyone sees them with respect.

Personally, I just happy that I saw Golden Eagles. But I am also happy that I see the sparrows that are nesting on my roof and feeding in my yard, or the collard doves, or... you get the picture.

A link to the story

Protecting Eggs and Nests

Over the weekend I had to adjust my plans. On Saturday I was supposed to go out with friends walking in the Pennines but as I am also volunteering as a body guard for one of the rare raptors that nest in the region, I had to cancel going on the walk for guard duties.

When at the nesting site, I was told that as the wind was gusting sixty and seventy miles per hour on the Pennines, I realised I had made the right choice.

I have been given permission to talk about this here, but obviously I can not say anything that will disclose or reveal the exact location of the nesting site. Its unfortunate that there are still people who collect eggs and deliberately disturb and destroy the nests of raptors. Thus the reason for helping protect the nest and the site. I, or better to say We, are not too close to the nest, but still close enough to have the reasonable view of the pair. But as the main reason for being there is to stop people approaching the nest, my main task was people watching rather than bird watching.

Just at the point that my relief arrived, a group of walkers decided that they were going to move off the public path. So I was not involved in trying to dissuade them from taking that route. Even informing the walkers that they were at risk of disturbing rare wildlife didn't dissuade them. Normally people will respond positively to requests like this, but this group were determined and militant.

I guess that I need to explain to my overseas readers, that in the UK we have a “Right to Roam” enshrined in law. However, this can be suspended to protect wildlife or if work using heavy machinery is being used, such as the tree felling that has been going on in my local woods. These walkers were adamant that they had the right to walk where ever they wanted. This stand off went on for over twenty minutes, so my fellow volunteer asked me to call the land owner. This I did. It took some ten minutes or so before he turned up, what surprised me was that the police arrived too. This changed the attitude of the walkers and suddenly they were keen to leave.
Following the police checking who the walkers were, it emerged that one was related to a person previously convicted of raiding nests.

It shows that the role of guarding this nest site and the many others up and down the country is vital. I had been thinking that I would have been having more fun had I gone off walking, but this experience shows why this work is so important.

Then on Sunday, I got a call from one of the people I would have been walking with and it turns out that they an eventful time too. As I said the weather was rather windy, when I heard the where they were walking I realised just how silly (I could use stronger words) they were. Two of the party came back injured as they were blown off their feet on the ridge top. I told my caller that I thought they had been irresponsible to even attempt to walk in such a location in weather conditions like that.

Fortunately, while late back, they all got back safely. But even my friend agreed that it had not been wise. The problem is that the boldest person in a party can lead others into danger. Anyway, I looked up this article about some of the stupid things that people do when out walking.

The Article

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Now I guess that I may need to explain to my overseas readers that the RSPB, the British version of the Audubon Club, started via its children's group, the young ornithologists club a project to look at what birds were visiting peoples gardens. Now that part should be as clear as mud!

However, us adults stamped our feet and started crying and said we want to play too... So quite soon after it started thirty years ago, we adults (adult only by longevity and not temperament) were able to sit for an hour and count the birds that visit our garden. They even make it easy by saying you can use the park as your back garden.

Therefore for an hour today I became a child. I went to the park for a change, as while my yard is getting better for birds, I also know that there are periods when birds just don't come in. And as one of the rules is that the bird must land, it was possible that I could end up seeing loads but recording nothing. Us Brits know how to make life complicated!

However, the serious part of this is not the very useful data that this project has generated in the past twenty nine years, but the fact that it has excited children young and old to look and learn about the environment, conservation and natural history.

Well I suppose that you want to hear what I saw, no I hear you cry, well I am going to tell you anyway!

Blackbird (6), Jackdaw (19), Magpie (3), Robin, Wood Pigeon, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Long tailed Tit (14), Great tit, Blue Tit (9), Starling (7), Pied Wagtail (3), Collard Dove (2) and Tree Sparrow (8)

Then following my stint I went for a walk and I ended the day with a long sighting of one of the Red Kites.

Changes in Bird Behaviour

In the last week I posted about a pair of Robin that had nested, in winter, down in Bedfordshire. While it would be nice to imagine that with the milder winters we are getting as a result of a changing climate, unfortunately what is the determining factor for the survival of the chicks is food. Each parent would need to find 35g of insects that’s about one and half ounces of insects to keep the chicks and themselves alive and for the chicks to build up body mass. Further, the RSPB, whose headquarters are in Sandy in Bedfordshire, also say that unless the parents could find enough grubs or caterpillars then the chicks would die of dehydration. As the chicks need the juicy bodies of these foods to supply their liquids.

While this Robin is an extreme example, part of the reason for the decline in British song birds is that climate change is causing many birds to nest earlier and before the insects hatch, therefore before the food is their to feed the chicks.

The change in the climate is effecting the behaviour of other birds. In the South West of England, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall birds like Blackcap and other warblers have for the last ten years dispensed with migration and are eking out a living in and around the sewage works. They are there because of the insects, mainly tiny flies, which breed and feed there. Not having to fly all the way to the Mediterranean means that they have reasonable fat reserves to make it through a mildish winter. However, any harsh cold snap has reduced the numbers of these non-migrating birds.

Also on the subject of bird behaviour, over the last week or so I have had the privilege of observing a red kite that has been hunting a few hundred yards from my office stroke back bedroom window. Today I went out to see if I could get some pictures. On time the Red Kite turned up. While watching I realised that there was a specific reason for the Kite quartering the area. The resent heavy rains has flooded out many small mammals, I saw a couple of dead voles too. Further while watching I saw a sparrow hawk fly other. I didn’t get any pictures, as I had forgotten the recharged batteries, no images but great memories.

Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans

When I was a child, as a family we only ever had two holidays. The first was on the Norfolk Broads and even though I would only have been about seven, I was excited by the sights of the bird life that I saw, especially the Herons and the Egrets that were all new to me. Further, I heard a haunting sound that I now know was the booming sound of a Bitten calling. Something that even now, is a really rare sound, seeing the Bitten is even more rare and I know many experienced birders who have never seen one.

The Second holiday was at Dawlish Warren near the Ex Estuary and by this time I was thirteen and able to appreciate the countryside and environment that was at this location. None of my family shared my love of natural history but fortunately I was able to garner the time to go off on my own and explore the mudflats. It was an amazing experience to just watch the waders and seabirds that I had never seen before.

Some of the birds I knew from books, some I didn’t. One that I had not seen before was a Wandering Albatross. Then I had no idea of just how rare my sighting was, and I had no idea that I could or should have reported seeing this bird. It was only a couple of years later when I became a member of the RSPB did I discover that there had been other unconfirmed reports of this Albatross being seen. Also it should be noted that this was in 1976 when the summer was remarkably hot and dry, and with hindsight, the weather and the unusual sightings were some of the first signs of a changing climate.

This experience prompted me to do two things, the first was to start saving up from doing a paper round for an SLR camera, the second was to start seriously looking at learning what I could about what I saw.

With the Albatross all I really knew was the ancient mariner poem and the bit about water and not a drop to drink. But the memory of seeing this bird with such an enormous wingspan has always stayed with me.

Therefore I was surprised to hear that we are loosing so many of these birds, as I couldn’t imagine what could we be doing to drastically reduce the population. The answer was that in tackling one conservation problem we had inadvertently generated another one.

Long line fishing had been seen as a much more sustainable way of fishing than trawling nets when catching species like Tuna. Frequently dolphins and proposes were also caught in the nets. As an air-breathing Mammal they were being drowned in the nets. Therefore fishermen were persuaded to go back to the traditional long line methods. The difficulty was that after years of trawling, the fishermen had lost the skills.

The older traditional fishermen would weight the hooks so they disappeared quickly so that birds like the albatross couldn’t snatch the bait. Also the older and more experienced fishermen would trail flags or banners from the back of the boat to keep the birds away. However the fishermen who returned to this form of long line fishing with lines of baited hooks some as long as one hundred kilometres, have lost the skills and it is now the albatrosses that were being drowned. Therefore organisations like the RSPB and Bird Life International have to re-educate the fishermen in the old skills.

As the albatross is such a long-lived bird, living to fifty odd years, they only reach sexual maturity at twelve to fourteen years. They also have slow reproductive cycle, laying only one egg per pair and only breeding every two to three years. Any sustainable losses will decimate the population. The fact is that in the last twenty years the population has halved and is decline at one percent per year.

The problem here was not the solution that saved the dolphins and proposes, but the fact that instead of using lines that were three or four miles long, but using lines that were more than ten times the length that were traditionally used.

Personally as Tuna is endangered itself anyway, I don’t buy or eat it. By not eating it we may help save the Albatross.


My thanks go to Lex van Groningen and Bird Life International for the stunning image of the Albatross