GOTCHA! A white-tailed eagle has just plucked a fish from a loch in Scotland. This rare sight may become more common with a plan to reintroduce the birds, sometimes known as sea eagles, to the UK’s south coast. With a wingspan of almost 2.5 metres, the coast-loving birds would become England’s largest raptors.
They were widespread in the south of England until humans wiped them out in the 1780s. This summer, the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England will embark on a five-year project to release up to 60 young eagles in woodlands on the Isle of Wight. The birds’ huge range means they will probably be spotted from the island and the mainland, mostly preying on fish in spring and summer, and waterbirds in autumn and winter.
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Some farmers worry that the eagles could kill lambs, as happens in Scotland, where they were reintroduced in the 1970s after the last white-tailed eagle was shot in 1918. But Tim Mackrill, who works with the wildlife foundation, argues this is unlikely in lowlands, where there is plenty of other prey, and sheep are kept closer to farms. He says no sheep deaths have been reported in a similar Irish scheme.
“This iconic species used to occur from Kent to Cornwall, but it was eradicated because of man,” says Mackrill. “We have a moral obligation to restore it.”
Photographer Mike Crutch
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