Coming soon to a sky near you … 400 sea eagles

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 21:46

UP to four times as many sea eagles will be soaring through Scotland's skies by the middle of the next decade compared with today, new research has revealed.

The study has predicted that by the year 2024, there will be between 159 and 200 pairs of white-tailed sea eagles in Scotland, compared to about 50 pairs today.

A spokesman for RSPB Scotland described the spread of the giant raptors, known as "flying barn doors", as a "fantastic conservation success story".

However, crofters and farmers who claim to have lost large numbers of lambs to the huge birds of prey say it could spell the end for their businesses.

Despite the predicted growth in sea eagle numbers, The Scotsman has also learned that four of 14 chicks introduced to Fife from Norway this year have died.

Two were electrocuted by power cables and two hit by trains as they tried to eat carrion on the tracks.

Sea eagles were persecuted to extinction in Scotland but a reintroduction programme has been taking place for the past 30 years, with chicks brought over from Norway.

Richard Evans, from RSPB Scotland, author of the study Growth and Demography of a Re-introduced Population of White-tailed Eagles, said: "It has been a very successful reintroduction project. It has gone as well as we could have hoped."

His research predicted there would be at least 81 pairs by 2015, 118 by 2020, and 159 by 2024. However, if the raptors – the fourth largest birds of prey in the world – keep breeding at higher rates seen in the past few years, there could be more than 200 by 2024.

Mr Evans said it was to be expected that some chicks from each batch released in the reintroduction programme would die.

He said this was because chicks that had been taken away from their parents were a little like "lost children".

"It is almost certainly because birds that have come out of a nest have their parents to look after them," he said. "If the adult birds know their territory, then the young birds will to an extent learn from that."

His new research has shown that chicks hatched in the wild within Scotland are more likely to survive than those brought here from Norway.

He said the population of sea eagles had been growing quite slowly but had now reached a level where it will start to take off – and there is plenty of spare habitat in Scotland into which the birds can spread.

That even includes the cities. Mr Evans believes they could soon be seen soaring over Edinburgh as they spread.

However, Willie Fraser, chairman of Gairloch and Poolewe branch of the Crofting Foundation, dreads the proliferation of the birds. He is among crofters who claim the birds took 200 lambs last year.

"It will be the finish of the sheep industry as far as I can see, especially for farmers and crofters up here," he said. "It's very worrying for us."