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GALLERY: New Pictures Of Isle Of Wight s White-Tailed Eagles Released
By Oliver Dyer
The second year of the five-year reintroduction programme is now drawing to an end.
Despite facing a number of challenges, Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation have hailed 2020 a success.
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Roy Dennis MBE says 2020 has been very encouraging : It was exciting that a two–year-old fe
male which flew north and summered in the Scottish borders found her way back to the island and re-joined her partner of last winter. Another boost was the older birds learning to catch grey mullet in the estuaries, then cuttlefish in the Solent and now taking amazing flights out into the English Channel to catch fish alongside the teeming hordes of gulls.
The first white-tailed eagles in southern England for centuries have been spreading their wings throughout 2020, the team behind a reintroduction project today said.
A group of young eagles were released on the Isle of Wight in 2019 and as part of a five-year project are being closely monitored.
The project team, led by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England, has released a gallery of images taken by birdwatchers of the birds in the wild.
In the Spring of 2020 the eagles released the previous year started to make their first major exploratory flights, tracked by solar-powered satellite tags on their bodies.
A pair of white-tailed eagles in flight
Credit: Ainsley Bennett/Forestry England /PA
Once-extinct white-tailed eagles are now thriving in England, conservationists say, as the relocated birds have been spotted spreading their wings over London.
The Forestry England project to rehome birds from Scotland in the Isle of Wight has been a success, leaders say, as four of the six birds introduced last summer have survived and another seven were relocated this August.
The birds, which have an eight-foot wingspan, have been spotted soaring across the UK, with one female spending the summer in Scotland before returning to her mate and home.
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It’s been a year most of us will wish to forget. If we could harness the power of the forgetfulness charm from Harry Potter, or utilise the Men in Black memory eraser, we would. Our lives became confined to our homes; our greatest adventures found only in board games.
But amid the grizzly moments there has been joy.
An Italian couple spotted one another on their balconies, fell in love, and are now engaged to be married. A group of furloughed Londoners raised £30,000 and cooked more than 25,000 homemade meals for healthcare workers. Neighbours organised socially-distanced bingo nights and communities filled bus stops with drawings.