White-tailed Eagles on the Isle of Mull

If at First You Don't Succeed.......

Strength and Power

Prehistoric people revered the strength and power of the Sea Eagle, often burying them alongside human corpses as a sign of the respect that these magnificent predators held in the local community.

White-tailed Eagles would have been a familiar sight to people living in towns and settlements in the Middle Ages, where they performed an essential role in helping tidy up the local environment  by way of their opportunistic scavenging of a free meal. 

For almost 70 years, this magnificent bird was lost to the coastal habitats it previously dominated, amid fears that it may never return. Unlike the Osprey, which has made such a spectacular return to Summer skies in Britain after becoming extinct under similar circumstances, the White-tailed Eagle was never likely to have made a similar comeback.

The White-tailed Eagle is a rare vagrant to the British Isles from elsewhere in its European range, thus was never likely to return to these shores of its own volition. The Osprey, however, pioneered its own re-introduction in the 1950’s, thanks to Scandinavian breeders that migrate through Scotland each Spring.

Abortive Re-colonisation

Two abortive attempts were made to re-introduce White-tailed Eagles back  to Scotland prior to the ultimately successful Nature Conservancy Council project that released 82 Norwegian chicks on the island of Rum over a ten-year period between 1975 – 1985; a second phase of this programme saw a further 59 Norwegian birds being released in Wester Ross between 1993 – 1998. 

An adult and two juvenile birds, captured in Norway, were released as the first, small-scale re-introduction attempt at Glen Etive, Argyll in July 1959.  Whereas the two youngsters quickly adapted to their new surroundings and learned to fend for themselves, the adult appeared suspiciously tame and was re-captured after attacking chickens at Appin! 

In 1968, the RSPB brought another four Norwegian eaglets for release on Fair Isle, one of the most isolated islands in the British Isles (located between the islands of Orkney and Shetland). Despite initial hope, this small number of birds proved insufficient to provide the necessary encouragement that a new chapter in the natural history of the White-tailed Eagle was about to be written.