One day I'll fly away Part 2

And it was all going so well. Too well.

Kellan, the young male white-tailed eagle from a nest on Mull in 2010, had successfully fledged from his nest high up in a block of Sitka spruce. He was being eagerly watched by many people on the campsite, by visitors on wildlife expeditions and from the boat trips up the loch. He'd been seen flying well by many observers and had even made it as far as his parent's favourite loafing area, the shingle spit at the head of the loch when the tide was out. I'd managed to catch up with him too. One day as his dad cruised passed the spruces with a fish from the boat in his talons, Kellan came shooting out of the trees in hot pursuit. I lost sight of them both as he chased the fishy offering away into the trees. That was the last time I saw him do that.

When he stopped being seen on a regular basis by the end of August, nobody was particularly concerned. By that stage, a month or so out of the nest, he may well have been making forays further afield, following his parents on hunting trips and learning new skills every day. Except that he wasn't.  As the month wore on, first his mother (yellow blackspot or YBS), then his father would set out to hunt into distant glens but there was no keen young eagle in tow. We couldn't always be sure when they returned or if they came home with prey. The evidence was beginning to mount that something had gone badly wrong for poor Kellan.

Kellan's Dad flying over Loch Na Keal - photo Debby Thorne

By early September we had all but given up hope of seeing him again. Then the mobile rang. It was a number I'd not been called from before and with poor reception I struggled to make out the voice and the message: "Hey, Dave. Is that you?" "Er, yes. Who's that?"  "I think I've found one of your eagles". You get a sinking feeling that chills and drains you after a call like that. The wind was whistling through the receiver; the caller - one of our Mull island farmers - was at the dipping shed processing sheep he'd just gathered. The noise of bleating lambs desperate to rejoin the ewes and crazed, barking collies made it nigh on impossible for me to fully understand the turn of events he was describing. He'd been on the hill, wading through head-high bracken, flushing out the last of the sheep who probably thought they'd given him the slip, when an eagle had erupted out of the vegetation at his feet. But it was struggling. Seriously struggling. He called the dogs away. Moved the sheep on down then went back to see what was up with the young eagle. As he approached again, it tried to flee but floundered in the bracken, rolled over and presented outstretched, extended, razor-sharp talons as a last resort . This was the final line of defence for an exhausted, starving young eagle with nowhere else to turn.

Now over the Centuries in these parts, farmers and eagles have rarely been the closest of allies for the reasons we all know and understand. And yet for many men and women who work hard in all weather in the hills protecting their flocks there is often perhaps a reluctant, but nonetheless genuine, respect for these wild spirits of the mountains. Today, it's ironic that they may actually need each other to survive more than ever. Farmers are increasingly rewarded through subsidies for 'high-value nature conservation farming' and biodiversity and the eagles themselves need the rich mosaic of an upland, farmed landscape wih mixed grazing regimes to produce their natural prey species and the occasional sheep carcase, victims of the harsh island climate, to sustain them through the winter. Fortunately for this desperate young eagle, he was discovered by a friend - of which there are many - not a foe. We should be forever grateful.

But he was busy dealing with hundreds of  sheep. He'd given me the information I should have needed on the the what and the where. That should have been enough and I had to let him get back to his important business. It's just that I completely misunderstood the details of the precise location for the struggling eagle. In the wind and the noise and the rush, I thought I knew where he meant and off I went to start my search. By now it was late afternoon and the weather was on the turn with looming black, thunderous clouds racing in across the Treshnish Isles to the west. I raced to the gate he'd described, on with the wellies and up the hill. The bracken was as tall and as inpenetrable as he'd described it; there was the second gate and the old stone wall - and the burn...

Sun going down on Loch Na Keal - Photo Debby Thorne

An hour later, I was still searching. No eagle. Soaked to the skin through rain and sweat, up the hill, down again, criss-crossing every inch of the dreaded bracken forest, bleeding from stumbling through tangles of  monster bramble thorns and dreading having to call the farmer again. His endless patience that afternoon says it all. As I described where I was and he described, yet again, where the eagle was, we discovered at about that the same moment I was at least two gullies to the west out. Every feature matched the description exactly, even down to the deer path and the crossing of the burn and the feed bucket by the dyke, but it was the wrong crossing, the wrong bucket and the wrong dyke.

Finally, with dusk gathering and the rain intensifying, I strugggled up yet another gully and there at last was the terrified young eagle jumping away ahead of me, himself getting tangled in the vegetation, his floppy right wing trailing through the grass. As I caught up with him, my lungs burning with stress and exhaustion, he again turned in a desperate last act of defiance and lunged at me, his eyes wild and fearful, beak agape, his feathers soaked and matted.

Here I was on an empty Mull hillside with night descending and only a very angry, if frightened eagle as company. It wasn't so much the beak that could do me some damage (though it could) but I really did not like the look of those eight, finger length, piercing black talons which were armed, dangerous and ready for use. He may have been tired and hungry but he was ready for a fight. How exactly was I supposed to talon-grapple safely with this bird, alone and over half a mile from the Landrover? Indeed should I intervene at all or let nature take its course? For a few moments up there on the rain-soaked hillside with the wind strengthening, the light now all but gone and with every fibre of my body aching, I looked out across the sea loch towards Ben More and actually didn't have any answers.

Ben More - Mull's only Munro - photo Debby Thorne

Tune in for Part 3 - shortly

Dave Sexton RSPB Mull Officer