Brian's birding blog: Booted Eagle in Kent

Friday, 11 April 2025

Booted Eagle in Kent

Booted Eagle sits in category D of the British List as it's thought the previous record of 1999/2000 had doubt about it's origin but with last years records followed by a Pale-morth bird being found in Cornwall on 12th January the birds acceptance to category A looks likely. The bird remained in Cornwall until 4th April some 83 days and pleased the birdwatchers that made the journey south for it. I pondered making the 600 mile 12 hour round trip for it but never got to the point where I could justify the time and money involved so when the bird was seen in Kent yesterday at 5.49pm I was more than interested. The bird was seen to go to roost which was very promising for finding it today but was quickly flushed and lost to view making the outcome of todays twitch a little less predictable. I called Jim and with some gentle persuasion he agreed to join me on todays mission.

We set off at 5.30am arriving in Broadstairs for 7am without a real plan other than getting ourselves in the general area and hoping. Two birders, Barry W and Jake were set up by the first roundabout so we parked up and joined them. There were eight other birders set up at Cliffsend hoping to get a chance of seeing the bird if it tried to exit from this historical exit point for raptors. At 9.30 the group at Cliffsend called to say they had the bird and it was heading into Manston the village to our west. We tried but couldn't see it and after some chat we decided to head into Manston and see if we could relocate it. We encountered a kettle of 15 Buzzard and a smaller kettle of 6 birds, we'd also seen four Red Kite, two Kestrel and three Sparrowhawk along with a large flock of 30 plus Magpie by this point but we still had not seen anything of the Booted Eagle. At around 10.15am we had another call from the Cliffsend group to say they had seen the bird again and it was heading toward Manston with a Red Kite. We decided to drive back towards the village but as we drove along the road we spotted a Red Kite so parked up at the helicopter station and jumped out of the car. Yes we could see a Red Kite but sadly it was alone, then another Red Kite and this time it had company and this time it was our target bird.....Booted Eagle was seen and seen well with good scope views as it drifted slowly north and was eventually lost to view. Our interest attracted a small crowd of birders and we managed to help most get a view of the bird before we lost it. What a twitch!.......as they say "He who dares".