Hannah and Simon Catch up With Our Steller's Sea-Eagles

Hi everyone, I'm Hannah, I'm on the Conservation and Research team here at the Trust and I'm here with Simon from our bird team and we're just having a catch-up about our Stella's Sea Eagles in the aviary behind us here. So Simon, can you tell us a little bit about these two? So we've got our male and female, male and female, sat there. She is actually a relatively new bird to the Trust, she came in December. If you've been to the Trust before you'd have seen that there was a pair of Stellas in here but they were both boys. We got them supposedly male and female but we found out that one was a boy so we've now got her, we've introduced them together. Nice, so how are they getting on? They are getting on okay, they're not sitting near each other at the moment but there's been no negative signs so no arguments or anything so hopefully over time they'll sort of form a pair bond hopefully. So they're just starting to get used to each other at the moment? Yeah. So these guys will be a breeding pair we hope, so why is it important for us to have breeding pairs here at the Trust? So both these birds are in the studbook so any of their youngsters as well that are produced will go into that towards sort of a captive breeding population. So the studbook is part of the European Endangered Species Programme and it's important for us to have these birds here as like a safe captive population because they are actually vulnerable in the wild. So Simon, tell us a little bit about some of the work that you do with this birds, I know you do some quite special enrichment with them. So one of the ways that we found that helps to prolong their feeding is that we've frozen fish in ice blocks and given it to them and it does make them stay on the ground longer and eat their food and also we did some research a few years ago about it. Yeah we did, so like you said we put the fish into the ice blocks and exactly like you've explained it basically means that they're just then feeding on that fish for much longer and it gives them a much more enriching experience of feeding rather than just gulping the fish down straight away and it also helps to sort of with more natural behaviour because they will feed on fish in the wild so we try to give them as much natural food as possible and what they would normally be feeding on in the wild and these birds would feed on the majority of fish would be part of their diet. They do also feed on deer carcasses in some cases so some populations of Steller's sea eagles are migratory where they'll spend the breeding season in eastern Russia and some of them will move to Japan in the winter and those birds that do move to Japan then spend time sort of in the forests and mountains and they'll take advantage of deer carcasses that have been shot by hunters. Now this is a really important food source for some of them but it does come with an associated threat unfortunately and that is lead poisoning because those deer are often shot with lead so one of the biggest threats to Steller's eagles sadly in the wild is lead poisoning so that's obviously why it's important for us to conserve them they are vulnerable and populations are decreasing. So Simon what can we hope for from this pair? So hopefully in the coming years they will get a stronger pair bond obviously they're not doing a huge amount at the moment but it does take a while to form that bond and hopefully in a few years time we might have youngsters with them very exciting and hopefully if you come and visit the trust very soon because we are excited to open you'll be able to come and see our brand new pair of Steller's eagles.