News on Electra...

Hi again... For those of you who remember the post from our Isle of Mull camping expedition you'll remember that during our stay we discovered and rescued an injured Golden Eagle.

While out in the early evening on a search for Golden and Sea Eagles up at Glengorm Castle we watched in horror as a Golden Eagle, being stalked by a group of Crows and Raven, was unceremoniously blown by strong winds into high voltage power cables! Having rescued her around an hour later along with Dave Sexton the Islands RSPB warden she was delivered by Dave and the local police to the 'Wings over Mull' sanctuary where it was discovered that she had some serious eye injuries. Not good as you can imagine for a hunting Eagle! The sanctuary which is run by Sue & Richard Dewar looks after numerous raptors and Dee and I visited the following day and met up with Richard to check on her progress. Unfortunately we were unable to see Electra as Sue had taken her immediately to the mainland for assessment.
The Island takes her Eagle population very seriously and a few days after our return to Napton I was contacted and asked to provide my personal details to DEFRA. Any person handling an Eagle is required by law to have a licence which I naturally didn’t possess.
Having kept in close touch with Dave as to the welfare of our Eagle now called Electra we were given some excellent news yesterday as was reported on the BBC news last night. Although Electra will never be released back into the wild her quality of life at the sanctuary has been greatly improved by some ground breaking eye surgery. When we visited the sanctuary at the time we were introduced to another male resident Golden Eagle called Laggan who we are now informed has taken a strong liking to Electra and so what the future brings for her, who knows?
We also received an email from Dave last night informing us that by a coincidence today he watched what he believes to be her old mate with a new love! They were nest building at their old site - just in time for Valentines Day. Life goes on and both seem content with their new arrangements.
We look forward to visiting Electra ourselves in the near future.

Oh and by the way with reference to my previous post (Technically Stressed) my attempts to have my permanent weather station linked to this blog have been abandoned. Until microsoft sort out thier rubbish operating system Vista from all the bugs I've given up trying :)