Wandering White-tailed Eagle
Reports
In the March Bird Notes there were two reports of White-tailed Eagle, a sub-adult in Sliddery on 3rd and one off Rubha Salach on 31st. The Sliddery bird was so close to the observer, Chris Southall, that the satellite tag on the back could be seen. Enquiries were made to try to find out more about this visitor.
A year earlier, on 2 February 2022 a satellite tagged young White-tailed Eagle wandered over Arran. It had been released on the Isle of Wight. After spending nine months in Scotland, it flew over Arran. Six days later it was over Staffordshire heading back to the south coast of England.
Our latest tagged visitor was not from the Isle of Wight: this bird had been fitted with the tracker as a fledged youngster in Deeside in September 2022. The male White-tailed Eagle chick, named Mar’verick, a twist on the popular Top Gun character, was successfully raised by a pair of White-tailed Eagles who took up residence on Mar Lodge Estate in Deeside earlier that year. For more information on Mar’verick go to this link The photograph was provided by Shaila Rao, Conservation Manager at Mar Lodge.
Robin Lyon Sinclair an Investigations Intelligence Officer for the RSPB provided this helpful information. “I think we can say with a good level of certainty that the bird Chris saw was indeed Mar’verick – he was in the south of the island on the morning of the 3rd March, having headed to the island the day before. He appeared to do a bit of a lap of Arran before heading back to the mainland later on in the afternoon of the same day. I’ve attached a map of Mar’verick’s movements on the morning of the 3rd – the period shown is between about 8am and 10am.”
The wandering of these sub adult birds is testament that the reintroduction of White-tailed Eagles following their persecution to extinction in the nineteenth century is being successful. Monitoring is a critical part of any species reintroduction to look at survival and dispersal and satellite tagging is a highly effective modern tool to do that.
I was left wondering why the UK’s largest bird of prey spent hours wandering around Arran on 3 March and only one person reported having seen it.
Enjoy your birding.
