Sea eagles in Oxford
Reintroduced to the Isle of Wight last year, are white-tailed eagles set to become a familiar sight across England?
The Isle of Wight’s reintroduced white-tailed eagles have been exploring the south of England
Anyone under 30 may find it hard to believe that red kites – reintroduced to England during the 1990s and now so common over Reading and the M40 and M4 corridor that people barely give them a second glance – were once about to disappear from Britain. Could white-tailed eagles, recently returned to the Isle of Wight after a 240-year absence in England, soar to equally spectacular heights by 2050?
“Why not?” says Tim Mackrill, a quietly confident raptor specialist who works for the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation. “These birds belong here, cheek by jowl, right among us.” Together with Forestry England, the foundation is leading an ambitious project to repopulate southern England with the huge eagles – Europe’s largest, with a wingspan of up to 2.4m. Also known as sea eagles, their nickname with birders is ‘flying barn doors’.
When first proposed, the scheme was greeted with howls of outrage. “Letting 8ft killer sea eagles loose on the South Coast is just bird-brained,” ran the headline to Robin Page’s Daily Mail protest. Predictable, perhaps, given that a similar plan by Natural England and the RSPB to bring back whitetailed eagles to Suffolk had been dropped in 2010, ostensibly because funding cuts meant the government body could no longer afford a costly public consultation. In practice, fierce opposition from local turkey and pig farmers had left it dead in the water.
On the move
Against the odds, this time a licence was granted to release up to 60 eagles over five years. In June 2019, the first six young birds were taken from healthy Scottish nests, driven overnight to the Isle of Wight, settled in familiarisation pens with minimal
human contact, then set free in August wearing £1,200 satellite tags.
The team adopted tried-and-tested techniques used with both red kites and ospreys – and indeed with whitetailed eagles, which were reintroduced to Scotland’s west coast in 1975–85 after dying out in the Highlands in the early 20th century. All three species had been hammered by persecution.
Tim learned his trade managing Rutland Water’s famous osprey reintroduction project, and with his new boss, the legendary Scottish conservationist Roy Dennis, is also behind the ongoing translocation of ospreys to Dorset’s Poole Harbour (where, Tim says, this summer might see the first successful breeding attempt). The EU Habitats Directive (1992) requires governments to consider bringing back extinct animals, but reintroductions are a complex, bureaucratic business. They take years of planning and endless public meetings to win critics over. A key test is whether a species occurred naturally in the past. The white-tailed eagle flew this hurdle, says Tim, pointing out that its alternative name ‘sea eagle’ is misleading. “This is not just a bird of cliff and coast. That’s only half the story.”
But was it really ever English? Absolutely, going by the archaeological evidence, which suggests that in Roman, Anglo-Saxon and possibly medieval times, the species was widespread in the lowlands. Further support comes from the many English place names that derive from the Old English ‘erne’ or ‘earn’, meaning large eagle.
Across northern, central and eastern Europe today, white-tailed eagles thrive far inland at lakes and along river valleys, nesting in nearby forest. In behaviour, these are generalist raptors, Tim says – “they tend to catch fish if they can, but also take wildfowl, shorebirds, small mammals and carrion.” This makes them more like North America’s bald eagles than golden eagles – upland specialists that roam vast territories.
“Conservationists in Denmark tell us their white-tailed eagles target sick and injured water birds,” says Tim, “and carrion can make up 30 per cent of the eagles’ diet in Germany. Our own released juveniles have been scavenging for a living, a lot like red kites. It’s what we hoped would happen.”
Change of scenery
As of mid-February, three eagles from the initial cohort are still on the Isle of Wight, while one, unexpectedly, has moved to Oxfordshire (one bird perished in October soon after release; another is missing, presumed dead). Steve Egerton-Read, the reintroduction project officer, has the
They tend to catch fish but also take small mammals and carrion, making them more like bald eagles than golden eagles.
job of tracking the eagles and, because supplementary feeding is necessary at this stage, doling out fish at two raised platforms on the island.
“Young white-tailed eagles can’t fish well, they are inexperienced hunters generally,” Steve explains, “so, in lean times might struggle. Since Christmas, the three island birds have been visiting more often. I put out mackerel, pout, scad… but conger-eel heads are a real favourite.”
Local ravens, crows and buzzards tuck in, too – “no bad thing,” according to Steve. “The eagles will spot these carrion-eating birds congregating and learn to associate them with food.” In turn, the response to the eagles has been fascinating to watch. “We’re seeing [behaviour] that hasn’t been seen in this country for hundreds of years. The corvids, buzzards and eagles haven’t forgotten how to behave around each other. It’s still there.”
This is good news, as a second crucial test for reintroductions is whether other
wildlife will be adversely affected. Tim refers to studies on mainland Europe that show white-tailed eagles have no harmful impact on any native species. He adds that, in the Netherlands, eagles have helped to control numbers of feral greylag and Canada geese by taking the goslings. By removing these competitors, the eagles could actually be benefitting native wildfowl.
The Low Countries were of special interest to Tim and Roy Dennis during their research. Being densely populated, with intensive agriculture, the region is comparable to the south of England. The pair were encouraged by what they found. “One eagle nest was just outside Rotterdam,” Tim says. “We were looking at it from the hard shoulder of a busy motorway.” As the mix of species in the Netherlands is also very similar to England, it gave Tim and Dennis a good idea of how eagles might fit in after release.
Getting on with the neighbours
Bucking the trend for wildlife declines, mainland Europe’s white-tailed eagles are booming. Germany has getting on for 700 breeding pairs; Poland, where the raptor is revered as the national bird, has a phenomenal 1,500 pairs. Scandinavia also has high densities. “The overriding view on the Continent is that these eagles are simply part of the countryside,” says Tim. “Attitudes are different in England, though, as we don’t have a recent history of such large raptors.” Convincing sceptical landowners on the Isle of Wight, where there are tens of thousands of sheep and two farms with outdoor turkeys, as well as shooting estates with pheasants and partridges, was always going to be the reintroduction programme’s toughest test. When white-tailed eagles were returned to Ireland in 2007 using
“I’ve met landowners who had no idea there was an eagle roosting behind their house.”
donor chicks from Norway, after going extinct a century earlier, hostile sheep farmers staged angry demonstrations; since then, more than a dozen Irish birds have died from poisoning.
Remarkably, the initial criticism appears to have ebbed away. “It is wonderful to see early signs of success in this project,” says Andrew Gilruth, Director of Communications at the Game and Wildlife Trust, which represents the shooting and hunting community. “We must congratulate those involved… southern England has enormous potential to support the reintroduction of raptors alongside existing land use.”
When Natural England issued the reintroduction licence, it insisted that in the rest of Europe there was no evidence that white-tailed eagles preyed on lambs on lowland sheep farms. Do local farmers now accept this view?
“To be honest, we weren’t won over,” says Matt Legge, who farms on the Isle of Wight and is County Chairman of the National Farmers’ Union. “We were a bit on edge. Still are.” Matt says farmers are most concerned about what will happen when the eagles reach maturity, at five or six years, and start hunting more proficiently to feed their young. He is reassured, however, that the licence requires any “problem” birds to be recaptured and moved, adding there have been no problems so far.
Matt sits on the reintroduction project’s steering group, and Tim Mackrill and Steve Egerton-Read stress the “huge efforts” to engage landowners and the farming community. In the end, though, the success to date may as much be down to the eagles themselves – specifically, their elusiveness. Matt says he still hasn’t spotted them; hardly anyone else has, either.
For such enormous birds, they have proved adept at melting into the landscape. “I’ve met a couple of landowners who had no idea there was an eagle roosting behind their house,” Steve says. It is astonishing that one of the wider-ranging eagles (known as ‘G3-93’) managed to hunker down, avoid the telescopes and binoculars of Britain’s army of birdwatchers, and live in Oxfordshire for several months virtually unseen.
Before long, this year’s white-tailed eagle breeding season will be underway in Scotland, and nest surveys will dictate how many chicks can safely be removed to the pens on the Isle of Wight. Within a few decades, several dozen eagles could be raising young in southern England. If the species spreads its wings, areas ripe for natural colonisation include Cornwall, East Anglia and the Somerset Levels. The eagle has landed.