Giving wing to flights of fancy
THE escutcheon of the Stanley family, earls of Derby, embraces an image of an eagle carrying off an infant in its talons, reminiscent, more innocently, of the classic stork-delivering-baby picture of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories.
Irish Stanleys, long established in business and farming, may well be aware of this unusual kinsfolk symbol. (Many years ago, in youthful newspaper days, I worked with Stanleys who had been proprietors of the old Drogheda Argus as well as cinemas and printing enterprises.)
I was not aware of the snatched baby story then, but it is apparently based on a particular Lord Stanley who while walking with his wife on his estate ‘accidentally discovered’ a tiny babe which he had had placed beneath an eagle’s eyrie — as if dropped by the bird — and encouraged his wife to take it home. The infant was an illegitimate child of his own.
It is suggested the image of baby-and-eagle wayside inn signs, with many still seen in rural England, grew from this but it is probable that the folklore of eagles and baby-snatching went back through the mists of time. The famous Eagle and Child pub in Oxford was the favourite watering place of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.
The huge white-tailed or sea-eagle was a regular sight at upland lakes and sea inlets in these islands until persecuted to extinction by the early last century. This largest bird of prey in northern Europe — at 70cm-90cm bigger than the golden eagle — was reintroduced at Rum in the Hebrides in 1976 with eaglets from Norway, from where four young birds (with six more to follow) were released at Lough Derg by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and Golden Eagle Trust last week.
The Irish eagle project has been operating since 2007. Over four years, 100 birds have been released at Killarney National Park to disperse generally with a first breeding at Lough Derg in 2012. In all, 31 youngsters have been fledged from eight to 10 breeding pairs.
Now a female bird bred in Co Clare in 2015 has incubated young, the first Irish-bred in more than a century.
I have been fortunate to have watched several eagle species in upland and ravine scenarios in Extremadura on the Spain-Portugal border in years past and have had many sightings of our most noticed and biggest raptor here, the buzzard.
The white-tailed bird promises another story entirely! It has been described, when perched on the ground, as being like an old tree stump and — massively beaked and heavily built — its cumbersome action has been likened to a flying barn door to be watched for over lakes and sea inlets as it hunts for fish of all kinds, the occasional wild duck and seagull being also snatched!