One day I'll fly away Part 4

There were moments over the next few weeks when you really had to wonder about the maternal and paternal bonds of eagle parents and their offspring. Birds of prey like white-tailed eagles are 'hard-wired'. It's all instinctive. When there's a chick around to feed, calling, food begging, they'll hunt, feed and protect it. If it vanishes overnight, the stimulus is removed and they move on. No food begging: no need to hunt so much. End of cycle. But something was different for the female, (wing tagged yellow black-spot or YBS) and her mate and they knew it. The last time they'd seen Kellan, he was on the hillside, in amongst the green bracken. They can't have known anything was wrong then although he hadn't flown, he hadn't followed them when they came in with food, for several days now. He had found a long dead sheep carcase in amongst the bracken and had stayed close to it.  It offered some nourishment but not much. They had provided for him too...fish, hare, auks - but the food they dropped for him remained untouched. He was simply too weak and incapacitated to reach it.

And then, suddenly, he was gone. One day as YBS flew in with fresh prey she couldn't find him. She flew back and forth along the hillside, head down, searching for her chick which she'd nurtured in the nest for over three months. Before that, with her mate, she'd incubated the egg for nearly seven weeks through wind, rain, sunshine and hail and had heard his first cheeping from within the egg just prior to hatching. Now, quite unexpectedly, he was gone. She flew on and perched with the prey and sat for ten minutes on a rocky knoll before searching again. Back to the perch, for twenty minutes this time, and then another fly past. Then to a new mound where, uncertain how to react, she ate the prey herself.

Over the next few weeks visitors at the campsite, unaware of what had become of the chick, reported the parent birds acting 'strangely'. Sometimes they still seemed to be searching for their lost chick. At other times they would be perched side by side in the conifers, restless, unsettled, calling.

On the other side of the country, Kellan was about to undergo his first major operation. He had been fed well by his surrogate Scottish SPCA  parents on rabbit and trout. If it hadn't been such an alien environment for him, he might even have got quite used to this first-class care and attention. His aviary was safe, sheltered and secure; he had room to move and to even struggle to a perch to roost for the night. Small things like that gave him a sense of security and that quiet and calm was already helping his fractured wing to heal. But he still needed a liitle help from his friends.

 

This photo shows the bits of bone and infected debris remove from inside Kellan's

broken humerus on his right wing - photo Romain Pizzi/SSPCA

 

 

 

 

 

He was taking his anti-biotics with his food which was already beginning to target the aggressive bone infection.  But it was also time for invasive and potentially dangerous surgery. There are few veterinary surgeons in the world who could tackle such a proceedure but fortunately for Kellan he was in the care of Dr Romain Pizzi  The day after his operation, Romain called me again: "Well he made it through and I'm quite pleased with him. The fracture is healing as well as can be expected; I cleaned out all the infected material and he is eating again. I'm cautiously optimistic..."

  

 

This photo shows the view from the Vet's endoscope - the view from the inside of an eagle's wing!

photo Romain Pizzi/SSPCA

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so Kellan's slow recovery had really begun. He would still need many more weeks of post-operative care. Back here, life on Mull had to return to normal. There were other eagle chicks to check on. Kellan was an important young eagle but he wasn't the only one out there. We had to focus and move on.

 

 

 

Kellan recovering slowly from his ordeal in the aviary -

Photo by Colin Seddon/SSPCA

 

 

 Over two months after her chick had seemed to vanish into thin air, YBS and her mate had probably moved on too. They could be seen down on their favourite shingle spit jutting out into the sea loch or perched in the oaks overlooking the goose fields. As far as they were concerned, they had entered their post-breeding phase. They were in moult. With no chick to provide for, they could ease back a little and with every ruffling of the feathers, clouds of down would drift away on the late summer breeze. But once or twice, YBS would take a detour from her normal flight line when she was heading back to the conifers to roost. She would veer off to the north and make a wide arc over the now browning bracken hillside where she'd last seen Kellan calling for food. He still wasn't there. She banked, drifted back south, her legs down and flew into roost for the night next to the male.

Meanwhile back in Fife, it was time for some decisions. Kellan's wing, infection and leg were healing well. Either he came back to Mull to try his luck with life in the wild or he spent the next thirty or so years in captivity. Had his injuries healed sufficiently well to risk the rigours of life in the hills? How could we ever know for sure until we tried? It was an agonising but tantalising decision. If he came home and died within a few days we would never forgive ourselves. But when the vet declared his time of recovery at the wildlife hospitial at an end, we knew we had to make that decision. He had been through so much, endured unimaginable trauma for a wild creature. Now his future was entirely in our hands.

 

Kellan gaining in strength under the care of the Scottish SPCA
Photo by Colin Seddon/SSPCA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dave Sexton RSPB Scotland Mull Officer

The final part of this eagle odyssey will appear later his week.