Massive white-tailed eagles are making return to habitat in south, say experts
THE first white-tailed eagles in southern England for centuries have been spreading their wings this year, the team behind a reintroduction project said.
Despite the pandemic, the fiveyear reintroduction programme – which began with the release of a group of young eagles on the Isle of Wight in 2019 – continued in 2020 with the release of seven new birds.
The project team, led by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England, has released a gallery of images taken by keen birdwatchers of the progress the birds have been making.
This spring, eagles released in 2019 started to make their first major exploratory flights, tracked by solar-powered satellite tags and spotted by nature lovers as they ranged as far away as Scotland, Yorkshire and Norfolk.
Their flights took them over populated places, even over central London, giving people living under lockdown a chance to see a long-lost natural sight.
In August, despite restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the team released a further seven birds, after they were flown down from Scotland by pilot Graham Mountford and his daughter Helen.
White-tailed eagles, nicknamed “flying barn doors” because of their huge 8ft wing spans, are the biggest birds of prey native to the UK.
They went extinct in Britain in the early 20th century as a result of persecution, with the last pair recorded in southern England in 1780.
But they were reintroduced from Norway to Scotland from the 1960s onwards.
The reintroduction project to bring them back to the south coast, where they were once widespread, involves releasing up to 60 birds taken from the wild population in Scotland as youngsters, over five years.
Four of the six released in 2019 survived their first year, and it is expected birds in the project will settle within 30 miles of the release site on the Isle of Wight when they breed at around four to five years old. Roy Dennis said it had been a “very encouraging year”.
“We’ve been particularly pleased that some people have viewed eagles flying over from their gardens during lockdown and to have received so many enthusiastic and supportive messages,” he said.
“The project is still in its infancy but sea eagles have again become part of life in southern England.”
The team plans to continue releases in the next few years to build up a population on the south coast of six to eight breeding pairs.