Battle of the Titans

It's when the RSPB mobile 'phone goes early on a Sunday morning that you fear the worst. Mike who was camping nearby first raised the alarm. The extra help we get from Strathclyde Police were next on the scene. An extraordinary scene lay before them: two adult white-tailed eagles on the ground, talons locked together, wings spread out across the grass, heads high, hackles raised and beaks in full attack mode. They must have been fighting for sometime already. Both birds were panting with exhaustion, occasionally resting, then resuming their assault on each other with added vigour. Down and feathers lay round about. Incredibly they must have locked talons in mid air and then tumbled earthwards which they will have thudded into with force.

A further 30 minutes elapsed before one bird, a female without wing tags, finally broke free and flew away apparently unharmed. But back in the field, the resident female with the distinctive yellow wing tags and a black spot, was floundering. Several times, she too tried to take off but couldn't. Her right wing trailing and a leg seemingly unable to support her weight. After two or three more attempts she half flew and half limped from the field down to the shingle spit at the head of the sea loch. As I watched her I could see she was a shadow of her former self. Her feathers were no longer sleek and smooth; they were ruffled and unkempt. She kept preening and fiddling with a place on her right wing suggesting some kind of wound. Every now and then she would throw her head back and call loudly to her mate who by now had been sitting on the nest within sight of the great battle for the last five hours. He must have been hungry and needing to stretch his wings but he sat tight on the eggs - torn between flying to his mate and hearing the early cheeping of his chicks from within the eggs. She too must have been desperate to return to her duties at the nest but she needed longer to recover - if she was going to recover. Two hours after she had made it to the beach, she started a more concerted effort to take flight. It was now her fourth attempt. We held our breath and had begun to make plans of what we would do next if she really was unable to fly. She started to run again with wings flapping and cleared the ground by a few inches. Flying low over land and then the loch she slowly, painfully gained height, inch by inch. The mocking flock of gulls all around her didn't help. It's as if they sensed she was not her normal self. But she battled on and eventually seemed to be flying more strongly. She circled high, lost the gulls apart from one persistant common gull and then glided puposefully back towards the nest and landed carefully in a neighbouring tree. The outburst of welcome calls from the male and her response back to him sent shivers down the spine. Yellow black spot was back. She may have been shaken but her spirit wasn't stirred. She still owned this place and at this stage, with eggs about to hatch, no one was going to take it from her.

Next time...anticipated hatch news from yellow black spot and an update from Loch Frisa

 Dave Sexton RSPB Scotland Mull Officer