White-tailed Eagles on the Isle of Mull

Home on the Range

Sedentary

The White-tailed Eagle is a vagrant rather than a migrant, with adult birds tending to be rather sedentary and faithful to their breeding areas. Young eagles, which take up to five years to reach maturity, tend to roam extensively in their early life before selecting a territory and settling down to breed.

The territory of an eagle is called its home range. That of a White-tailed Eagle may encompass between 30 and 70 km² and can overlap with the territory of the Golden Eagle. Competition between the two species can be fierce but is usually limited. As a general rule, most of Mull’s White-tailed Eagle population can be seen at the coast, with Golden Eagles’ preferring mountain and moorland terrain.

Described by some as a generalist predator and scavenger without stringent habitat requirements, the White-tailed Eagle has long been associated with coastal sites and adjacent upland areas in North and West Scotland, where it builds it's nest in trees or crags.

White-tailed Eagles are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and may be encountered in conditions that range from desert to Arctic climates, from Greenland, east to Central Asia and Japan. The largest population in Europe is found in Norway, where around 2,500 pairs breed, approximately 15% - 20% of the world population.