The Accipiter - Online magazine from The Hawk Conservancy Trust

October 2005

September began both on a low note and a high note.

The former was the untimely demise of one of our best and most trusty display birds, Fraggle the White-bellied sea eagle, from poisoning. There were the lucky ones at The Hawk Conservancy Trust who Fraggle would be handled by, and there were those of us who aspired to one day handling him. We are all still reeling from this news and Bob Rogers has written a fitting obituary for a sadly missed bird.

The latter was the super Members’ Evening on the first Saturday of the month. The weather was at its best; a perfect, still, late summer evening. The wine and soft drinks flowed, the barbeque fizzed and the ‘spot the picture’ competition and raffle ticket tables buzzed with anticipation. We were treated to an excellent flying display, the theme of which was the cycle of life and featuring all the latest birds in training – from our youngsters Kipling the Griffon vulture (who is too young to fly) and Tolkein the Milky eagle owl (who is learning to fly), to older birds such as Voltaire and Blyton the Yellow-billed kites, and Hades the Gyr facon, all three of who came to us via HM Customs having been confiscated from people trying to import them illegally. Then there was the Turkey vulture, and the enigmatic young Bataleur eagle, as yet unnamed but currently known variously as Biscuit or Billy.

After the raffle was drawn we were given a fascinating presentation by our four students on the Tawny owl project they have been carrying out over the summer. They included details about every aspect, from information about the owls themselves, their sexes, where they had been fostered around the park and how that might affect their potential in the wild, to how and where they chose release sites, to fitting the tracking devices, when and how the tracking was carried out, how the individual birds had fared, and their movements. All this was backed up with graphs, photos and maps. Adults and children alike were enraptured as the story of this successful project unfolded. All four of the students, namely Jenni, Jemma, Tracey and Amy, have now left the park but, having become important figures around the grounds for the past couple of months, will be missed, and we wish them all well for their futures. You can read their final report in our Research section.

Although the schools have now reopened after the long summer break, the weather remains in our favour so visitor numbers are still respectable, and we hope it will continue in this vein until we close for the winter at the end of October.

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