Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation: hands-on conservation - White-tailed eagles: side by side with other species

White-tailed eagles: side by side with other species

10/11/19 • 21 min

Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation: hands-on conservation

The release of six white-tailed eagle chicks on the Isle of Wight in August this year was just one of the early steps on a very long road. The ultimate goal of the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England is to see the species breed again in England after an absence of 240 years, but first the eagles have to learn where they fit in this unfamiliar landscape.
The podcast hears about the experience of the Irish White-Tailed Eagle Reintroduction project, which released 100 chicks over 5 years from 2007, and saw the first successful breeding in 2012. The bird is not an easy one to track down, even if satellite-tagged: it spends long periods simply sitting still, either waiting to hunt, eating or digesting its food, so sightings of the bird that has roamed from the Isle of Wight to Oxfordshire have been few and far between, despite the fact that it's our largest bird of prey. Even if we humans struggle to see it, though, the local birdlife is always well aware of its presence, and the podcast explores the relationship between other carrion eaters - such as red kites, jackdaws and magpies - and this mighty newcomer to their patch.
Producer: Moira Hickey
Contributors (in order of appearance): Roy Dennis, Fraser Cormack, Allan Mee, Tim Mackrill, Ian Lewington, Steve Egerton-Read
Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Previous Episode

The adaptability of ospreys

As the satellite-tagged osprey Deshar continues to seek a permanent spot in West Africa in which to settle, this podcast looks at how ospreys on their first migration have to compete for space with older birds unwilling to give up prime locations. Roy Dennis explains how ospreys learn to adapt to fishing in foreign waters, facing new hazards such as crocodiles, and hears from The Gambia on how juveniles cope with the hostility of more experienced birds. Because each bird is an individual, with its own particular skills, we also hear how some are simply better than others at finding enough to eat.
From Morocco, too, we hear news of what killed Carr, the brother of Deshar, whose remains were found on the edge of a reservoir in Morocco. At first thought to have fallen prey to a fox or a dog, the bird was not, in fact, killed by a mammal at all, and Roy explains how a glance at the feathers and bones was enough to explain its death.
Producer: Moira Hickey
Contributors (in order of appearance): Roy Dennis, Junkung Jadama, Mike Crutch
Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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White-tailed eagles: their reintroduction to Scotland

The white-tailed eagle had been absent from Scotland for forty years when the very first attempt at reintroduction took place in 1958. A later project, led in 1968 by Roy Dennis and George Waterston on Fair Isle, between Orkney and Shetland, was groundbreaking but also unsuccessful, due largely to the very small number of birds involved. This podcast, though, hears from John Love, in conversation with Roy, as he talks about his ten years on the Hebridean island of Rum, site of the first successful reintroduction of sea eagles to Scotland, led by John in partnership with Roy and others. Eleven consecutive years and a total of 83 eagles brought in from Norway (with invaluable support from the RAF) led to success for this precursor to similar reintroduction projects, such as the current one on the Isle of Wight.
Producer: Moira Hickey
Contributors (in order of appearance): John Love, Roy Dennis
Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, downloadable from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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