200th White-tailed sea eagle chick hatches on Skye.
26/03/2007 00:00:00
White-tailed sea eagles.
- The viewing site at the Aros Centre on Skye shows live images from a nearby white-tailed eagle nest where you can follow the live action all week.
- A recent financial study by the RSPB ‘Watched like never before – the economic impact of spectacular species’ showed that white-tailed eagle watching on Mull contributes roughly £1.7m to the island economy every year.
- The first wild-bred white-tailed eagle fledged on Mull in 1985, 10 years after the first young Norwegian eagles were released on the Isle of Rum in 1975.
- Since 1985, many organisations have become involved in the conservation of White-tailed sea eagles, such as Scottish Natural Heritage, RSPB, Forestry Commission Scotland, Mull and Iona Community Trust, the police, landowners and hundreds of volunteers contributing thousands of hours of monitoring time observing sea eagle nests.
August 2006. Twenty one years after they were reintroduced, the hard work by conservation groups, volunteers, the police, local communities and landowners, has paid off with the 200th White-tailed sae eagle chick fledging in the wild on the Isle of Skye.
The eagle, one of a brood of 3, the first recorded triplets on Skye, took flight under the gaze of wildlife CCTV cameras at the RSPB Aros Centre near Portree. Unfortunately one of the three chicks died during a summer storm.
Sea eagles settled on Mull and Skye not long after their 1975 reintroduction to Rum, with the first pair attempting to breed on Skye in 1987. Skye is now home to ¼ of the White-tailed eagle population of Scotland and is one of the best places to see the birds in the wild.
Alison Maclennan, RSPB Scotland’s Skye Officer said, ‘This is a terrific milestone for us to reach after so many years of hard work, and especially exciting to mark it with the first ever sea eagle triplets to hatch on the Isle of Skye. Perhaps what is most impressive is that it took us 25 years from the first introduced birds to see a hundred wild-fledged sea eagles – and just the last six years for that figure to double’.
The Aros Centre white-tailed eagle viewing room will remain open until October, where visitors can see footage from the summer and hear the full story of the eagles.
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