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