There's good news for bird watchers and nature lovers in Roscommon this week with the appearance of not one, but two white tailed-eagles in the county.
The birds have been reintroduced to Ireland as part of a special project with the first white-tailed sea eagles being brought here in 2007.
Up to a 100 have been released at different stages since that time, mostly in the south of the country.
The birds are tagged and their movements are monitored by those involved with the project.
The two eagles in Roscommon were spotted by Brian Burke this week who's a native of the county, but who also works for Birdwatch Ireland as a scientific officer.
He says he was doing a count of water-birds in the south of the county when he encountered the two birds earlier this week.
"I just had my telescope out and I panned across and saw this absolutely huge bird sitting beside the river and couldn't believe my eyes. With the size of these birds, you really can't miss them and eventually it flew off. About an hour later I was somewhere else, about three or four kilometres away, and I could see out of the corner of my eye an ash tree and in it there was this huge thing and I knew immediately there was nothing that could be that size and that far up the tree except a white-tailed eagle and I managed to get some photos of them with my phone. It was only when I got home that I realised that these birds had wing tags on them and the two tags were actually different".
