Sea Eagles

Sea eagles were reintroduced in Scotland when Norwegian birds were released, first on Rum in 1975 and then on Mull in 1985. Almost as soon as we arrived on Ardnamurchan in 1997 to run the Kilchoan shop, with Rum just to the north of us and Mull to the south, we began seeing them, and by the time we left they were well-established and had begun nesting on Ardnamurchan itself.

They were soon displacing the resident golden eagle population, which retreated inland as the sea eagles' range expanded. Not that their arrival was welcomed by all. I have seen enough sea eagles passing over....

....with the pathetic remains of a lamb in its talons to have a deep sympathy for the crofters who were losing both income and their much-loved animals.

Sea eagles are magnificent birds to watch, so we soon learned that, if we wanted to see one, then we needed to pay attention to the local gull population which, when an eagle strayed into their territory, would get up and mob it - noisily.

Not that it is easy to identify whether the large raptor one is watching is a sea eagle, golden eagle or buzzard. The best way of telling from a distance is if one can recognise the birds that are mobbing it; things like the crows and gull are dwarfed by the sea eagle's size.

Here on the east coast descendants of the sea eagles which were released on the west coast so many decades ago are now starting to arrive. We've seen them, always at a distance, and other people have reported quite close encounters - but I have yet to take a good picture of one.

The picture above was taken at lunch time today when a sea eagle - look at the size of the crow chasing it to get an idea of its size - passed over. I saw it - or another - again this afternoon, but without the chance of even a distant photograph.

I look forward to my first really good photograph of a Golspie sea eagle.