White Tailed Sea Eagle
Date: August 6th, 2024, Pool harbour, Dorset
I was booked on the 9am “Big Five” cruise with Greenslde Pleasure boats, https://www.greensladepleasureboats.co.uk
The Object was to find the White Tailed Sea Eagle, Ospreys, Marsh Harriers, Peregrine Falcon, and Hobbies. The boat was a typical pleasure cruiser, a downstairs cabin with seating, coffee shop and toilets. And an upper deck with seating for about 40 people. It was 3/4 full. The weather was overcast and raining slightly. It got brighter as the morning went on, but still never got to be good light.
The cruise covered most of the Northern half of the harbour, (north of Brownsea island). Poole Harbour is the second largest natural harbour in the world, and for the most part is very shallow. The Eagles were usually seen in the area of the Wareham Channel, at the Western side of the harbour. So that’s where we went for most of the time.
As my focus was to get some good images, the trip was disappointing. For 95% of the attendees who were bird spotters, seeing a blob (Eagle it seemed) in a tree 1/4 mile away was exciting! It was more a case of my expectations were ahead of reality and what I saw was typical of one of these cruises.
It was an enjoyable three hours, and good to have at least seen a distant Eagle.
All images shot on my Fujifilm XH2s and the 150-600mm lens, Eagle and Osprey images are heavily cropped.
