We recently featured the story of a resident golden eagle nest on our Rahoy Hills Wildlife Reserve. Nestled in the wilds of the Morvern Peninsula, Rahoy Hills is home to a huge array of wildlife from red deer to rich arctic-alpine flora. In this blog, our Ranger, Steve Hardy, continues monitoring the eagle nest to see if the eagle’s will raise their first chicks since 2018. You can find part one of the series here, part two here, and part three here.

On 15 April, I found the eagles still on the go, with a sitting adult on the nest. The good weather had continued. It had been so warm already, and it was easy to forget that it was still only April. Migrant bird species were arriving early, and on my walk back I heard and saw my first redstart in the oak woods. Butterflies too were appearing early, with the first pearl bordered fritillaries seen that day. Greenshank were on territories, golden plover were displaying, and it was nice to see both dipper and grey wagtail along the river. April last year was much the same, but not long into May and the weather turned awful, and the rest of the spring and summer was dire, wet, windy and cool. I so much hoped the same wouldn’t happen this year, for the eagle’s sake and all breeding birds.

29 April – The eagles were due to hatch around the end of April, what would I see today? When I arrived, there was a bird on the nest. A text came through. It was a good morning greeting from Scottish Wildlife Trust friend and colleague Peter Harrison. I texted back telling him that I was looking at an eagle through my scope. Peter was going to text back saying how selfish I was telling him that, but he phoned to tell me instead. As we chatted, the other adult came to the nest. The sitting bird stood and stepped away from the nest cup, and shortly left the nest, and as the bird that had come in moved across the nest, I saw two tiny chick heads rise above the nest rim before the adult settled over them to brood. It was nice to have been able to share this moment with Peter.

Peter left me to it and I continued to watch the nest. Doubts crept in; it’s so far away, were they chicks I had seen? It was so brief. I wanted further confirmation, so kept my eye glued to the scope. The sitting bird rose again on two more occasions during my watch before heat haze and shimmer meant I could no longer see. On both occasions I was certain I saw the movement of at least one chick beneath the standing adult.

Although the weather was warm, it was cold high up and early in the morning and there was a cold easterly. I had sat still watching the nest and not realised I had become thoroughly chilled and was shaking with cold. I packed up and headed to the sunny side of the hill and was very glad to feel warmth return to my body as I walked and descended the hill.

I thought about what I had seen, about what I thought I had seen. Were there chicks? Why hadn’t the bird that came in fed them? It hadn’t returned with prey either. I had to realise that I was only watching for a relatively short period of the day, and that at the moment there is around 15 hours of daylight. I was only going to see what I see in the time that I’m there and miss so much during those many hours and days when I’m not.

I wondered too which adult had been on and which had come in. It is said that females do all of the brooding of chicks, and all of the feeding, and the males do all of the hunting and bringing in of prey, until the chicks are old enough to be left, after which the female also hunts and brings in food.

I was confident enough to say that they had hatched, and was sure I had seen chicks on three occasions. But with the distance and the sightings of the chicks’ movements being so brief, and with the adult’s behaviour…there was a little niggling uncertainty in my mind, I have to say. I really needed to see the feeding of chicks to be 100% sure. This was nothing new, I’d been here before in other years, seen what I was sure was the movement of chicks, and doubted myself. I was eager to go again.

3 May – Another watch. More tantalizingly tiny, far away, brief glimpses of chick movements beneath an adult on the nest. Again the adult that was on the nest was replaced by the other adult, so again if there were chicks, the parents were sharing brooding duties. I wasn’t seeing the adults together for long enough, in good enough light to be able to tell them apart, and on this occasion, the bird that was on the nest came off before the other adult arrived, so I didn’t see them together. Females are bigger, and the resident female does have a larger lighter blonder head. I was sure it was her that was on when I arrived, and that the male had come in and taken over. But the books say males play little or no role in the brooding of chicks. Perhaps that is the norm, but perhaps it is not the case with every pair. However, in failing visibility I left again, certain that the pair were still on the go, but still without that conclusive sighting I wanted to remove all the uncertainty and questions from my mind.

11 May – I was up at my watch point early again, before it became too hazy and that unhelpful heat shimmer developed. The light was good. I felt this would be the watch where I would find out for sure what was what. An adult was on and sitting in a high brooding position, rather than that low in the nest incubation position. This was good. Half an hour later the other adult appeared in front of the nest cliff, and through the scope I could see it had prey in its talons. It flew to the nest and the sitting bird rose. The adult that had brought in the food left within seconds. The parent that had been brooding walked round the nest rim to the prey item. It stood on this and began a 25 minute feed of a very obvious and easy to see snow white chick, tearing at the prey and passing it morsel by morsel to the chick.

Finally! And what a relief! What a wonderful sighting. One I had not seen since 2018, and one I had wondered if I would ever see again.

When the chicks are very small and days old, they are an off white, almost greyish colour, and they don’t so easily stand out as they do when a little older, when that early down is replaced by a much whiter snow white down. This chick looked sturdy and at least two weeks old. Those movements I’d seen had been chick movements, after all.

After the feed the parent carefully walked round the nest rim again, and settled back over the chick, partly over the nest cup and partly on the nest rim. After another week to ten days or so the chick can be left and both parents will be able to hunt, doubling the hunting effort and doubling the chances of catching and providing food.

I would love to know what the parents are manging to find and catch, but, somehow, they are managing, against the odds. They have a long way to go, but they are doing well to have got this far. The good weather will be helping, hunting will be easier than if it was wet and windy, there will be more bird prey species returning to the hills when they should, rather than being held back by bad weather, and the chicks would be less vulnerable to chilling.

Yes, I think I saw two, and now there is one, but that is very normal. The two eggs hatch two days apart, and if food is short the younger chick usually perishes and is fed to the older chick. It’s a survival thing.

The settled weather has continued. We are doing all we can to safe guard the nest, but the fate of this young eagle is out of our hands. It is doing well and has a chance of making it. I truly hope it does and that I see it on the wing over the reserve later in the summer.

What is in our hands is to continue to restore biodiversity to the hills, to help ensure that the golden eagle keeps its place at the top of a healthy food chain.

-Steve Hardy, Rahoy Hills Ranger

Click the links below to read the previous blogs in the series:

Eagles of Rahoy 1

Eagles of Rahoy 2

Eagles of Rahoy 3