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Hard work is going on in the nest of white-tailed eagles Linda and Sulev:  eggs must soon be laid and incubating must start. Many months have already passed since last year's nesting season, so the faces of our star actors may not be quite clearly remembered. Questions have been asked on the forum – are the eagles on the nest this year really Linda and Sulev from last year?

Last year, when Renno climbed up to the nest to ring the eaglets, Aivar managed to catch some photos of the angrily scolding Linda; on these photos it was possible to read the numbers on Linda’s rings: 

 

 

On Lindas’s left leg is a white/black ring with the legend H407 (easy to see on a black background, but not on white) showing that Linda was hatched 180 km away, in the Alam-Pedja Nature Protection Area in 1998. With a good will, these numbers can be read this year too on the female bird in the nest – the numbers show up better if the photo is enlarged (click on it): 

 

The ring on the right foot is blue/white (as for all white-tailed eagles hatched in Estonia), but the blue colour doesn’t always look blue (especially in photos), and it may be mistaken for black. Only in a favourable light it is seen as blue in photos too: 

 

When an objective lens with a wider angle is used, things further away seem smaller than they really are. When an eagle comes close to the camera, the bird seems especially large. But the nest remains at a medium distance (about 2 metres) all the time.