STEVE EGERTON-READ: You can get connected with individuals quite

easily because they're very apparent in the landscape. When

you watch other birds, you don't necessarily know that's the same

individual that you saw yesterday. Whereas with eagles,

you know which individual it is. And for me personally, I've

known all these birds throughout their lives. So every time I see

them, it is quite special.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: One of the most majestic birds ever to

grace our skies is making a comeback. The white-tailed

eagle, or sea eagle, as they're also known. Became extinct in

the UK in the early 20th century. Where I'm visiting in

the south of England today, the Isle of Wight, lost them even

earlier than that. But it's now possible you might spot them.

I'm Ranger Rosie Holdsworth. Welcome to the wild tale of the

Return Of The Eagle.

I've just popped up to Culver Down, which is the last place...

On the Isle of Wight that white-tailed sea eagles were

recorded nesting way back in 1780. We're right on the top of

the cliff and I can see why they were here. It is an amazing

place to be an eagle. It's got fantastic 360 views over the

sea, lots of fishing opportunities, some very steep

cliffs with I'm sure lots of craggy nesting opportunities.

While there are no eagles nesting here today, it is now

possible to spot the bird on the island and beyond.

So tomorrow I'm really looking forward to because we're going

to meet someone who's part of a team which is working on a

white-tailed eagle reintroduction project on the

Isle of Wight and I'm hopeful that we might even see some

eagles ourselves so it could be a very, very exciting day

tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it.

And so, after a night's sleep and a short drive to the other

side of the island, I'm ready to go.

Good morning, you must be Steve.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Hi Rosie, really nice to meet you. How are

you?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Lovely, yeah, I'm very well, thank you. Steve,

or Steve the Eagle Man, as he's known in these parts, is Steve

Egerton-Reed, the White-tailed Eagle Project Officer for

Forestry England.

So Steve, where have you brought me and where are we going to go?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: I've brought you to the wonderful Newtown

National Nature Reserve and Newtown itself is a really

interesting place. It used to be one of the biggest towns, most

important towns here on the Isle of Wight but now it's one of the

most important nature reserves on the Isle of Wight.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: We're wandering through an amazing

meadow and down towards the salt marsh and I can see the salt

marsh out in front of me with some boats sitting in the mud,

in the salt marsh and a boardwalk out across the marsh

so I'm assuming is that where we're heading

STEVE EGERTON-READ: We're heading out into the marsh, we

can see the wonderful Isle of Wight coast and we can even see

the New Forest in the distance can't we

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: There we go what a view.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Have you seen an eagle before?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: I have.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Fantastic, so I mean there's a lot of

things that are really striking about them. So, this is a bird

that's got an enormous wingspan at two and a half meters,

beautiful, bright white tail but it's also got this big, heavy

yellow bill and this kind of blondie, grey look.

But here we are in the Isle of Wight. This is the last place

that the birds bred here in Southern England, all the way

back in 1780. I think you've been to Culver Cliff where the

last pair supposedly bred.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Yeah, I was up there, yeah.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: And really, the story for what it told

eagles is quite sad, right way up to the early 20th century,

when the bird became extinct as a whole in the UK.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: White-tailed eagles were once widespread

across the country. It's thought there were as many as 1,000 to

1,400 pairs in 500 AD. But through the Middle Ages, they

suffered persecution and numbers declined drastically. By the

late 18th century, there were only a few breeding pairs

remaining in the UK. They disappeared from the Isle of

Wight, from Culver Cliff, in 1780. And then the last known

breeding pair in England was thought to have been on the

Isle Of Man in 1815. They hung on in Scotland for another

hundred years. And it was in Scotland that a white-tailed

eagle reintroduction programme was launched in 1975. There are

now 150 to 180 pairs of eagles there. But the bird is still

listed as a bird of conservation concern, making it one of the

UK's rarest species.

So as we walk out onto the salt marsh, where is the best place

for us to start to scan and look for eagles?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: This is a bird that spends about 90% of

the day perched up. You don't necessarily have to sit in a

tree. It can sit on a post. It can sit on the ground even.

Imagine yourself as an eagle for a minute, Rosie. Where would you

sit if you wanted a really good view? And then, you know, it's

always a good idea to have a little look in the sky. You

know, you could get lucky and one just fly over. I'm just

going to make a quick scan for you.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Oh, there is something pretty big in the top

of the...

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Oh yeah, so it looks as though there's a

buzzard at the top of that bush there. There's a phrase that

everyone always says, if you think you've seen an eagle and

you're not sure, you probably haven't. I don't see anything

just yet, but we shouldn't give up hope too early.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Should we head out over the boardwalk and onto

the salt marsh?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Yeah, let's do that Rosie, let's try and

give you as best a chance of seeing an eagle as we can.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So an eagle reintroduction project sounds

really exciting, but I know from experience how these things can

be quite laborious and quite involved. What are the mechanics

of trying to reintroduce a species like that?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: So white-tailed eagles, they hatch

usually sometime in April or May. We collect these young

birds, birds that are around seven weeks old, from wild nests

in Scotland.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: All the birds come from twins or triplets.

It's part of the licence condition with NatureScot that

at least one must be left behind. That allows Forestry

England, working alongside the Roy Dennis Foundation, to take

the birds from wild nests. Taking them at seven weeks old

is crucial.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: We want them to be as independent as possible

of their parents, so they don't require any hand rearing or any

intensive care. They're pretty much fully grown, they just

haven't quite developed the power of flight.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: In fact, their very first flight is a bit of a

VIP trip down to the Isle of Wight.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: It's in a little Cessna coming down from

Inverness to Bembridge Airfield.

Yeah, a little private plane, yeah.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Then, over the next six weeks, the birds are

fed mainly on fish, conger eel, rabbit and canada goose in

preparation for being released.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: They get a really a real smorgasbord if you

like for those six weeks that are with us and they grow really

fast. We get checked by a vet just prior to release and then

we fit GPS devices.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The project aims to establish 60 breeding

pairs that will spread out across the south coast of

England and Steve is 37 pairs in.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: So these birds take a long time to reach

breeding maturity they're sort of talking four or five years.

And in that sort of interim period, they kind of go all over

the place. So these GPS devices, imagine your mobile phone,

they're a little bit smaller than that.

They weigh about 50 grams and they fit on the bird like a

rucksack. So there's a harness, so we stitch the harness

together. We don't stitch it onto the bird, but the harness

stitches together. And at some point, the harness will fall

apart and the device will fall off the bird. But these devices

are so incredible. They're these really natty things. They've got

little mobile phone SIM card in them. And it gives you real,

real power in understanding what the birds are doing in the

landscape.

So to give you an essence of that, like if I wanted to I

could send a message to a bird now and say, or device rather

than bird,

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: It is a bird.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: It's not going write back though, and say

you know I want the device to log points every second, I want

it to transmit to me every 10 minutes. And what that allows us

to do of course is understand where the key landscapes are and

we can go and stand in a field and we can monitor them for long

periods of time.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So if you can track them with the GPS

harnesses, have you tracked them leaving the Isle of Wight?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Pretty much all of them leave the Isle of

Wight at some point in their lives. So young white-tailed

eagles, really from ages one, two, three, they're really

nomadic.

Perhaps the most remarkable set of journeys comes from a pair

now that are established in Poole Harbour. The male bird is

a bird called G463. So he made an exploration down to Cornwall,

Lands End, a sort of mini autumn holiday I guess. And then he

settled in South Somerset for the rest of the winter.

But then come the spring, he went on this epic exploration up

into East Anglia. And then later that spring, became the first of

the birds that we released to cross the English Channel. Made

this epic journey through France, Belgium, the

Netherlands, and into Denmark. You think, is he going to come

back? And he did.

The following year, he went back to all the same places he'd

visited the year before. He'd created a memory map of where he

was. You know, remember the key points of the landscape, you

know, down to the same trees, he was roosting in the same trees,

but he did come back.

This behaviour is really important and that's why part of

the reason the translocation works is this natal philopatry,

we call it. So the birds want to come back to where they regard

home to be. And for them, the Solent shore and the surrounding

wetlands, Poole Harbour, Chichester Harbour, and even the

freshwater wetlands inland, that's home.

But regardless of where they go, they all try to come back to

sort of within 50, 60 kilometres of us here on the Isle of Wight.

And really that's what we want them to do of course because we

want to try and establish a breeding population here on the

south coast of England and we hope sort of within 10 years of

starting the project we'll establish somewhere between six

to ten pairs of eagles within 50 to 60 kilometers of the Isle of

Wight from that initial translocated population and at

that point the population will be self-sustaining.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Brilliant. Do they have territories? So at

some point will there be so many eagles on the Isle of Wight and

surrounds that they need to push out into other areas. Is that

kind of part of the idea?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: That's a good question. I mean, like,

yeah, white-tailed eagles are really territorial. So, you

know, this is the apex avian predator. So it's right at the

top of the avian food chain. And it has really massive territory.

So you're looking at 10 to 30 square kilometres.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Wow. So, Steve, shall we wander a little

bit further out onto the salt marsh.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Well, yeah, sure. We'll see what we can see.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: One of Steve's jobs as project officer is to

work with the farming community on the Isle of Wight and respond

to any local issues or concerns. While in Scotland, evidence

indicates some white-tailed eagles scavenge dead lambs and

very occasionally take small or weak black-faced sheep.

This has been found to be due to the open-range nature of

agriculture, bad weather, and lack of alternative wild prey.

But the team take concerns from farmers and livestock managers

seriously and have worked with researchers in the Netherlands

and Ireland where there have been successful reintroduction

programmes and no cases of eagles taking lambs or any other

livestock.

So as we go, I have to ask, you mentioned that eagles are

obviously a top apex predator. With a reintroduction like this,

was there ever any worry that they might eat some of the

things that maybe people don't want them to eat, like domestic

livestock, that kind of thing.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of

concerns at the outset of the project from livestock farmers,

there was concerns from conservation managers, you know,

there were concerns about the types of birds they might eat,

or some of the other things that they might impact on a landscape

scale.

And of course, you know, there's also potentially worries from

game or fisheries. But to date, we've had no conflict at all.

And that doesn't mean to say that we are sitting back and

resting on our laurels. We meet a couple of times a year and we

chat about how the birds are doing and about the project more

broadly. And it's an opportunity for anybody to raise any worries

that they might have. And alongside that, we do a whole

host of really proactive engagements with landowners,

with land users and conservation groups too. So we feel things

are going really positively. And broadly speaking, most people

are really, really positive and excited about the project.

So I suppose we'd better stop here and have another little

scan, eh? Yeah.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The tide's pretty much fully out and it's a

great place out on the salt marsh here, we're kind of

surrounded by the wetland. So it's a great place to be

scanning and looking for eagles. So Steve, you can't do a job

like yours without being really passionate about it. What is it

about eagles that kind of gets you up in the morning and keeps

you motivated?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: The more you watch them, the more interesting

you find them as well. And, you can get connected with

individuals quite easily because they, they're very apparent in

the landscape. When you watch other birds, I enjoy watching

all birds. I think they're fantastic, but you don't

necessarily know that's the same individual that you saw

yesterday. Whereas with eagles, you know, which individual it

is. And for me personally, you know, I've, I've, I've known all

these birds throughout their lives and that's, so every,

every time I see them, is quite special.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: But it's not just Steve who enjoys the eagles

being back on the island.

STEVE EGERTON-READ: There's lots of people that perhaps didn't

necessarily have an intimate connection with nature before

who are now thinking, actually, it's really cool and

white-tailed eagles are really amazing. And white-tailed eagles

did once have a really deep cultural value to us. In the

Iron Age and the Roman period, these birds were really highly

revered and had high spiritual value.

The return of this bird is kind of put the white-tailed eagle

back in that cultural spotlight and we have works of art that

are going around. So I think there was one christmas where

somebody made this beautiful christmas card with white-tailed

eagle and a santa sleigh in the background over The Needles. It

was fantastic. Seriously put in the spotlight by this fantastic

mural that you can go and see on the Columbine building in East

Cowes and it's like 12 meters high and about 60 meters long I

think. And the centrepiece of this artwork is this huge

white-tailed eagle in this art deco style, it's absolutely

beautiful.

It's really becoming part of Isle of Wight's cultural

identity and you know we're really proud here on Isle of

Wight I feel and that we have a place that it started again

where this resurgence of this bird in southern England this is

where it happened and we're part of that story.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Just having one last scan out across this

incredible salt marsh. There are a few distracting looking

cormorants sitting on the tops of posts, but no eagles. Should

we start wandering back inland?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: I suppose we should.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So the whole aim of the project is to

re-establish a breeding population in the south of

England. The million dollar question, have the eagles bred?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: Yes. So in 2023, we're really lucky in

that he

first pair of eagles bred on the south coast of England in 240

odd years

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Amazing!

STEVE EGERTON-READ: So it was actually it was really it was a

really surprising sort of event because the pair were really

young. So it was a pair of birds that were released in 2020 and

you'll remember of course I said to you earlier these birds don't

breed till they're about four or five normally. So these birds

were three and they bred at three years old and they raised

a single chick, a male called G625 and then last year 2024,

they've bred again. And they had two, they're twins.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Oh, amazing!

STEVE EGERTON-READ: So a really fantastic moment. You want that

early success. And then when you get it, it's just, it's very,

very satisfying.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Yeah. And on a kind of, on a personal level,

did you feel emotional when they fledged chicks?

STEVE EGERTON-READ: I mean, it was one of those weird things.

You can't, it just feels so surreal. You don't, don't really

believe it's happening in truth. It's strange because 2023, that

period, you know, the birds incubate for about 38 days and

then the chicks from a nest for another 11 weeks. It felt like

an age, every moment you thought oh my god like yeah not it's not

happening oh this could go wrong. You worry about things

and time seems to go really slowly and then last year you

sort of blink and you miss it. They've done it been there

before it's okay like but of course there's a long way to go,

before we can say your bird's secure in Southern England. So

time will tell.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Fingers crossed.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Wild Tales. If you

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with another episode in a couple of weeks. But if you can't wait

that long, why not check out our other nature podcast, Nature

Fix. Or if you like your history too, there's Back When. I'll see

you next time.