As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Birds of a feather: Twitchers flock to see first ever sighting of rare short-toed eagle in mainland UK after it lost its way from Africa

A thousand frenzied twitchers have rushed to the south coast after a rare bird of prey was spotted on mainland Britain for the first time ever.

File:Short-toed Eagle 02.jpgPolice were needed to control crowds as bird watchers flocked to Wareham Forest in Dorset after news broke that a short-toed eagle had been seen over the weekend.
The young bird of prey, which has a 6ft wingspan, got lost on its first migration from Africa and ended up on the south coast of Britain rather than southern Europe.

Enthusiasts have travelled from as far afield as Scotland to glimpse the endangered bird, which has only ever been seen twice before in the UK before - in Jersey in 1999 and the Scilly Isles in 2011. 

The eagle has lost its way by hundreds of miles on its journey from sub-Saharan Africa to southern Europe, with the majority of the species heading to southern France, Spain, Turkey, Greece and Russia.


Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)