The release of six white-tailed eagle chicks on the Isle of Wight in August this year was just one of the early steps on a very long road.  The ultimate goal of the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England is to see the species breed again in England after an absence of 240 years, but first the eagles have to learn where they fit in this unfamiliar landscape.

The podcast hears about the experience of the Irish White-Tailed Eagle Reintroduction project, which released 100 chicks over 5 years from 2007, and saw the first successful breeding in 2012.  The bird is not an easy one to track down, even if satellite-tagged: it spends long periods simply sitting still, either waiting to hunt, eating or digesting its food, so sightings of the bird that has roamed from the Isle of Wight to Oxfordshire have been few and far between, despite the fact that it's our largest bird of prey.  Even if we humans struggle to see it, though, the local birdlife is always well aware of its presence, and the podcast explores the relationship between other carrion eaters - such as red kites, jackdaws and magpies - and this mighty newcomer to their patch.

Producer: Moira Hickey

Contributors (in order of appearance):  Roy Dennis, Fraser Cormack, Allan Mee, Tim Mackrill, Ian Lewington, Steve Egerton-Read

Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/




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