It's exactly a year since the release of six white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Wight, a return to a place where they last bred in 1780.  It's a good moment, then, to take a look at the progress of the birds released in 2019, and to hear about the impact they have had on some of the people who have encountered them.   

In this five-year project, working in partnership with Forestry England, the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation aims to translocate up to sixty white-tailed eagles from Scotland to the island.  In this, the second year, the Covid 19 outbreak has naturally meant a different way of working, but a second batch of birds has been released, as planned.  Future podcasts will look at the detail of how this translocation was carried out: how the birds were collected from their eyries, how they were cared for by Roy and his team at his home in the Scottish Highlands, moved to the Isle of Wight and finally released in early August of this year. Already, a bond is forming between one of the 2019 birds and the new arrivals, and fascinating satellite data is telling Roy and his colleagues about the way that eagles learn their landscape, shedding light on the amazing journeys they undertake in the years before they are old enough to breed.

Producer: Moira Dennis

Contributors (in order of appearance): Fraser Cormack, Tim Mackrill, Dave Sexton, Pauline Jacobs, Roy Dennis, Ian Perks, Steve Egerton-Read, Ed Drewitt, RJ Macaulay

Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/