23 Jun Brief foray into eagle aviary sees excitement build.

As you all know, we strive to breed all birds of prey here in full daylight seclusion aviaries, meaning that babies are reared by their own parents, with no human intervention, leading to naturally behaved, and well rounded youngsters for training.

There is very little data on this species, due to the fact that they have only ever been successfully bred in captivity in one other place, that being the National Bird of Prey Centre in Gloucester.

This meant that when we went in to ring our baby at the age we expected him to be the right size, we were too late for the usual ring size, and had to use the next size up. The next size up ring is a good deal larger so had to be padded to stop it from falling off until the birds foot was a little bigger, BUT with padding on, we had concerns that it would eventually become too tight. We recently popped into the aviary to double check that it was still loose, and were delighted to see the process of the chick (the ring was perfect). He is thriving, and we thought we would share a photo of him with you, at 7 weeks old. This bird will come away from his parents at the end of November, and we hope to introduce him to you all as part of experience days for summer 2018, before he takes up his full and final place on our hunting team bound for the high tops of the Cairngorms.