Observaties van Zeearenden Haliaeetus albicilla in de Oostvaardersplassen in 2004

During eight days in winter 2004/05 observations of White-tailed Eagles were made in the Oostvaardersplassen (52°20'N, 5°20'E), using a hide situated near dead Red Deer Cervus elaphus. This nature reserve in Flevoland has been used as a wintering site by White-tailed Eagles for several decades already. On 21 October 2004, five eagles were recorded, i.e. an adult, a second calender-year and three first calender-years. Up to three eagles visited the carcasses simultaneously, enabling sexing (size comparison), ageing and reading the colour-ring of a second calender-year female (red, S 572). The latter had been ringed as a chick on 12 May 2003 at Garbek in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, and was – before showing up in the Oostvaardersplassen – last seen on Funen in Denmark on 31 October 2004. The adult eagle was a male, given its much smaller size compared with the colour-ringed female. Deer carcasses were frequently visited in October, but successively less so in the course of the winter when large numbers of ducks and geese arrived in the area, a major food source during mild winters. The carcasses were mostly used by Red Foxes Vulpes vulpes and Carrion Crows Corcus corone, the latter profiting from scraps and bits tom from the deer by foxes.