Moffat Eagle Festival - Day 4

Our final tour of the festival and we met two guests in Carlisle before heading up the motorway to meet the rest of the group in Moffat. The forecast was to be a bit more unsettled today, especially into the afternoon with a storm due.

Checking the first two glens we had flocks of linnets, goldfinches, swallows, ravens carrion crows and a lovely female sparrowhawk fly by. We gave it a good stint in the second Glen and had nice views of buzzards and more good songbirds with long-tailed tits, siskin, redpoll and a brief Jay. No sign of eagle, but we would head onto the northern side to check all of that hill ground.

The weather managed to hold off as it continue to be dry with good visibility and the wind got up a bit in the afternoon, which we had hoped would be the case to try and get bigger birds to prey onto the wing.

One of the sightings of note was actually hearing otters squeaking from close to a river. We think they were in the vegetation and maybe snuck off downstream, but potentially a mum and cub, as is often the case when you get the squeaking contact calls of these lovely mammals.

We enjoyed an afternoon walk, admiring the recovering landscape all around us, lush vegetation, great floral diversity and a mix of young trees. After connecting with golden eagles on our free previous trips, unfortunately we didn't manage to see one today, but we covered a lot of good habitat and hopefully helped the guests with future opportunities if they return to these wonderful landscapes.

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who joined us in Moffat as part of the eagle festival. We hope you enjoyed the tour with us and also may find it beneficial for future wildlife watching in the area.

Keep an eye on the South Scot GE Project website for more news / updates on how the eagles are doing along with updates from the recent festival - https://www.goldeneaglessouthofscotland.co.uk/

We contributed 15% of our profits from the Moffat tours to the 'Restoring Upland Nature' donation page which will go towards helping to expand the golden eagle project to south of the border, with a vision to restore this emblematic species to Cumbria, Northumberland and beyond! 

If you would consider donating to the project, see the link here - https://www.peoplesfundraising.com/donation/donation-1737124652977

During the tours, we also looked at some fantastic recovering landscapes around the Moffat hills, managed by the Border Forest Trust, have a look here to find out more and ways to support their work...

https://bordersforesttrust.org/

Ewan, John and Ben