Despite poisoners, wind turbines, storms, the odd shooter and a dwindling supply of furry food, the renaissance of great birds of prey is worth a medal in Ireland’s rewilding of wildlife.
The current release of 21 chicks of white-tailed eagles into habitats in Munster confirms the future of the island’s biggest bird – its wings arch across two metres or more. But this success chimes against the steady decline of more than 50 smaller birds of farmland and moorland.
Even among birds of prey, there is concern for the barn owl, the hen harrier and now the kestrel, the hovering falcon of the west.
In a column in 1999, I described a "millennium project" to bring golden eagle chicks from Scotland for careful rearing and release at Glenveagh National Park in Co Donegal. Later, as the first 15 tore into deer meat in training cages in the woods, I shared sly and silent peeps alongside Lorcan O'Toole, the project's inspirational manager.
A big concern, then as now, was the range of local prey available to the eagles. A study for the National Parks and Wildlife Service had compared the amounts of grouse, hares and rabbits living in the home ranges of Scottish eagles with the prey available in Donegal. Kilo for kilo, the food supply seemed ample.
The subsequent saga of pairing, nesting, attempts at breeding, of life and loss and death of chicks, has been an ever-watchful, roller-coaster experience for O'Toole, now director of the Golden Eagle Trust.
The Donegal population of his eagles remains on a knife edge, as hills grazed bare by deer and sheep support so little wildlife. “Food is what it comes down to,” says O’Toole. “The birds are hardy. It’s all about food.”
Eagle slaughter
Twenty years on from the first release of birds, they are supporting a second generation. This summer found Donegal with five pairs, centred on the Blue Stack Mountains, and at least one chick has fledged. Over the years, eagles have roamed as far south as Kerry, but I have waited in vain for their return to Mayo’s Mweelrea mountain, an original territory for the eagles of the 19th century.
A deadly 1860s ambush of Mweelrea’s birds by imported Scottish shepherds marked the start of eagle slaughter in the western hills, newly ranched with thousands of imported blackface sheep. Ironically, it was reassurance from today’s Scottish sheep farmers that helped to persuade farmers around Glenveagh of the eagles’ minimal toll of lambs.
The farmers of Kerry, less well prepared, seem mostly to have weathered their initial, highly vocal suspicion of the larger white-tailed eagle. But it has met deadly hazards since its first releases in 2007. The common name of “sea eagle” for the white-tailed bird, born of their swoops to snatch sea and lake fish, hides a wider and sometimes fatal appetite.
Those in Ireland have been recorded also taking waterfowl, seabirds, hares and other mammals, and feeding on dead seals, deer and sheep. It’s the scavenging of carrion that makes them vulnerable to poison baits, set out for other “vermin” or with malign intent.
In 2020 a Raptor Report, led by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, published details of the known deaths of birds of prey in 2007-2019. It found that 14 white-tailed eagles had been killed by humans, mostly by poison or by being shot or hit by vehicles.
This coincided with the malicious killing of some 30 buzzards in west Cork early in 2020 by baits laced with carbofuran, a toxic insecticide widely banned in Europe. Along with the careless use of rat poisons, the report concluded, “Every regular breeding bird-of-prey species in Ireland has suffered from poisoning, persecution, collision or direct disturbance.”
Successful breeding
The white-tailed eagle project, managed by the NPWS and the Golden Eagle Trust and advised by Dr Alan Mee, began with 100 Norwegian birds released in 2007. They began breeding at Lough Derg and Killarney National Park, and attracted thousands of visitors to watch a nest within sight of the village at Mountshannon, Co Clare.
The breeding has been very successful, producing 35 chicks in two successive generations. A pair nesting at Lough Derg have produced three chicks this year, a family rarely matched even in Norway’s wild population.
Two further radio-tagged releases have confirmed the bird’s establishment at the predatory pinnacle of Irish wildlife. Of 10 new birds released last year, nine have survived, travelling throughout the country and even, in one case, to Scotland.
Another 21 birds from Norway have now joined them. Their release at four Munster sites (the Shannon estuary, Killarney, Lough Derg and Waterford) could well extend their breeding range.
The cliffs and crags of the Mayo coast, I feel bound to point out, once held quite as many nesting sea eagles as Kerry. And a pair arrived once to chew at a dead seal on the strand below us, seen by ornithologist and neighbour David Cabot.
