Dame Judi Dench and Outlander actor Sam Heughan have named two golden eagle fledglings, GoldenEye and Sassy, as part of a conservation project to restore the species to southern Scotland. Five young eagles fledged in the region this summer, four of them descended from birds translocated as part of the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project, a development conservationists say shows the once-fragile population is becoming self-sustaining.

Dench, 91, named her eagle GoldenEye in reference to the 1995 Bond film in which she debuted as M, while Heughan named his Sassy after his Sassenach Whisky brand and expressed hope it might fly near his home area. The project, run by charity Restoring Upland Nature, has boosted the southern Scotland population to more than 50 birds, the highest figure recorded in three centuries, with chief executive Dr Cat Barlow calling the successful breeding of translocated eagles' offspring a "hugely significant milestone" that could inform similar restoration efforts elsewhere in Britain.