Island eagles unite to hunt
White-tailed eagles have learned a new hunting technique on a Scottish island – by grouping together to catch geese.
Filmmakers captured the remarkable “learned behaviour” on Islay while making a new BBC documentary series, Wild Isles, presented by Sir David Attenborough.
The first episode, to be shown tonight, shows for the first time ever how the UK’S largest birds of prey use the co-ordinated attack method to prey on barnacle geese.
The eagles are seen looking for and then targeting a weaker goose among the thousands that congregate in the estuary before embarking on a spectacular pursuit.
The goose manages to evade one eagle but is caught in mid-air by another.
Sir David said: “This young bird and all the other white-tailed eagles here on Islay have only learned how to hunt barnacle geese in the last 10 years.”
White-tailed eagles, or sea eagles, were wiped out in the UK over a century ago, when the last native bird was shot on Shetland in 1918. A reintroduction programme began in Scotland on the Isle of Rum in the 1970s using birds from Norway and there are now about 130 pairs.
Their 8ft wingspan has earned them the nickname of “flying barn doors”.
Up to a dozen white-tailed eagles now winter on Islay, where they have learned to prey on the huge number of barnacle geese that arrive on the Hebridean island from Greenland to feed on grass.
Up to 30,000 of these geese – sometimes half the world population – arrive on the island each autumn. Capturing the hunt required a team covering the birds’ range over 70 days of filming.