Dermot Breen's Blog: White-tails back again!

Wednesday, 23 November 2016

White-tails back again!

I got a report of two or three White-tailed Eagles on Saturday. Two were considered adults and the possible third individual was unaged. While I get the occasional report of eagles, these were seen in an area that has been previously frequented by the second territorial pair of White-tails, D-Bar (male) and Inverted Triangle (female).

I visited the area yesterday and quickly managed to pick up three White-tails together, first time I've seen three together in Connemara and what a sight! I was delighted to see that one of the birds was the same female Inverted Triangle. This bird hadn't been seen in about two years. Her radio tag battery gave out back then which made tracking her far more difficult. Unfortunately D-Bar the male's battery failed prematurely around the same time (he's one year younger than her) however he was seen regularly on the lower Lough Corrib during the winter of 2014/2015. He hasn't been seen since however.

Accompanying the female was another male which; F-Bar, a bird released with the same cohort as D-Bar. F-Bar is no stranger to Connemara. He had spend a few months here previously and was briefly cavorting with Inverted Triangle and Semi-Circle, the female from the Roundstone pair that I later found poisoned in the nest on the eve of their second breeding attempt. Unless D-Bar shows up again in the Spring to reclaim Inverted Triangle, F-Bar may have finally found himself a mate.

The most intriguing thing however was the third bird was an untagged juvenile female. Allan Mee of the Golden Eagle Trust informed me that there were just two juveniles that weren't tagged this year and that it was believed that both were males! So that leaves us with a rather open question. Was one of these untagged Irish juveniles mistakenly sexed as a male or was this bird the product of an undiscovered breeding pair - possibly F-Bar and Inverted Triangle?? It could be possible that this pair may have remained undiscovered this year as I haven't really thoroughly checked the area in quite a while due to local under-staffing issues. The possibility that they may not have bred in the Connemara area is another option or that it may be the product of another pair altogether, could it even be a Scottish bird? It wouldn't be the first time a Scottish bird has shown up in Ireland (and vice versa). Although I'm not sure for certain, I would assume that a lot of the Scottish chicks are also tagged? White-tailed Eagles aren't overly territorial during the winter and can often be found in numbers together especially when there are good food sources in an area so this juvenile may have just have been passing and joined the adults. The juvenile was heard giving begging calls to the adults but I think a juvenile would hope that any adult would take pity on it and offer it some food if pestered. There was no aggression between the adults and juvenile. They remained in close proximity for the hour or so that they were in air together. The juvenile didn't join the adult pair when they landed in trees later on however. Regardless if the adult pair bred this year they should hopefully give a try in 2017 as both birds are now certainly old enough.

Hopefully it will be a productive season however with well over 100 wind turbines being currently erected within three kilometres of one of their main roost sites and the presence of the "Poison on Land" sign at yesterdays location, one would have serious doubts as to their future. While it's unlikely that a landowner would still be putting out poison on his/her land and broadcasting it like this, it just shows the ignorance and attitude amongst many of our "custodians of the landscape". These signs are sometimes erected to discourage dog walkers even though its clearly illegal. I've also had a farmer at this location telling me to my face that if the eagles even looked at any of his lambs, he would have no qualms about killing them, he was almost boasting about it. There is a large proportion of Irish people who honestly don't believe that the law of the land applies to them.