It has been a hugely successful year for the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project. After 8 eagles were successfully released at the end of the summer, we now have 12 translocated eagles thriving in southern skies. This year also saw the launch of our permanent exhibition, The Eyrie at Philiphaugh Estate near Selkirk and we held the first ever Eagle Town Festival in Moffat. However, the work doesn’t stop there, 2022 will bring further translocations and many more opportunities to engage people and communities across the south of Scotland with this ground-breaking project and iconic bird.

We are delighted to let you know that our new Eagle Information Point called ‘The Eyrie’ has recently opened at the Waterwheel Tearoom on the Philiphaugh Estate just outside Selkirk.

This blog post was inspired by our funders at the Heritage Lottery Fund and their #heritagetreasures campaign. To find out more search @HeritageFundSCO and @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, and @heritagefunduk on Instagram.

Here at the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project we have many ways of communicating the beauty and impressive features of the golden eagle. We have 2D wooden cut-outs showing the wingspan up 2.2 meters, we have footage from the wild showing project eagles soaring high and we also invite falconers and their eagles to schools and events. These are all great but we wondered if there was a way allow people to get up close and personal. Something to touch and hold in order to really get an idea of the size, form and weight of a golden eagle. A 3D model was the answer; a chick roughly the age when we would collect from the eyrie and a juvenile roughly the age of being released from our aviaries and in the wild for a few weeks.