Long sought white-tailed eagle nest found at Burtnieks Lake

31.05.2019 08:05

juras erglis

Photo: White-tailed eagle chicks from Burtnieks Lake nest 04.06.1955. (Photo: Ģirts Kasparsons from Ruslans Matrozis archive)

The many year search after the nest of white-tailed eagle in the surroundings of Burtnieks Lake by LVM experts has finally been successful. White-tailed eagles in the Burtnieks Lake and its surroundings have been noticed for at least five years. The various time of observation and the fact that adult birds were seen suggested that a nest has to be somewhere near.

But “near” for eagles is a flexible concept and LVM forest district where the nest was found covers almost 2000 hectare. When performing forest management works in this territory, the LVM environmental planning specialist, Kaspars Liepiņš, managed to find the long sought nest.

Even though white-tailed eagle is a large bird and his nest also is large, search for a nest in Burtnieks forest territory is complicated. “In summer visibility is made difficult because of leaves of trees and shrubs, in winter walking is difficult because of snow, but in spring and autumn many places are flooded. Also this time, to find the nest, the cold water had to be felt – to cross a flooded lowland rubber boots had to be taken off and needed to walk bare feet,” said the finder of the nest.

The LVM Environmental planning specialist, Mārtiņš Kalniņš, points out: “In this and also in other cases, when we find nests of protected birds, we create a territory in our database for the protection of habitat and a buffer zone for the protection of habitat – an area where we do not make economic activity works during nesting season. This nest will be included also in the list of annual nest surveying. Natural diversity conservation and reduction of the impact of forest management works on the environment is a part of forest management planning and daily forestry work organisation, because it is important for us to understand if our forest management practice altogether and measures for the protection of particular nest are successful”.

At the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century 8 to 10 white-tailed eagle pairs were nesting in Latvia and one of them – next to Burtnieks Lake. Later the number of them reduced and in the fifties there was only one nesting place known at Burtnieks, where in year 1955 two chicks were found. In further years nesting here was not found and until the seventies there were not any known and verified white-tailed eagle nesting places in Latvia

At the end of nineties, next to the current nesting place, ornithologist Juris Lipsbergs constructed artificial nest for white-tailed eagle. There are no news whether white-tailed eagle lived in this nest, but the new-found nest is natural – built by white-tailed eagle