The Homecoming

This is a big year in Scotland. The 'Year of Homecoming' has just been launched to coincide with the 250th birthday of Robert Burns. The hope of the Scottish Government and of everyone involved in tourism is that as many people as possible will think about 'coming home' to Scotland in 2009. Whether your ancestors once travelled from the Motherland to the New World and you want to see where they once lived or you just want to see Scotland because you never have or because it's your favourite place in the world, this is the year to come. And we hope Mull is on your travel itinerary...

Mull is the official 'Home of the Sea Eagle'. It's where it all began for the return of this once heavily persecuted species when the first reintroduced pair bred successfully here in 1985. A gift from the people of Norway to the people of Scotland - the sea eagle had indeed come home. Other once extinct species have also settled once more in Scotland. Some like the red kite have been helped back like the sea eagle having been originally shot, poisoned and trapped to oblivion. Ospreys made it back on their own but were then helped considerably by many people over many years to really get established as they are today.

But there was a remarkable homecoming scene on the shore at Killiechronan recently which was both heart warming and poignant at the same time. It was witnessed by a field trip of the Mull Bird Club and photographed by Bryan Rains of 'Wild about Mull'. The local pair of sea eagles were in a favourite place on the shoreline at the eastern end of Loch na Keal. They were facing up the loch and straight into the strong westerly wind. At times they were almost blown off their feet but they braced themsleves, stayed close and with their heads down they were determined to sit out the approaching storm. Nothing, not even a ferocious gale, would beat an eagle. Or maybe they were watching something further up the loch, unseen by the hardy observers in the squalls and saltspray which was rapidly coating their binoculars and telescopes?  For out of the mist drifted two young eagles. They flew confidently considering the worsening weather and almost looked like they'd been there before. When they finally landed, right next to the adult pair, all became clear. The adults showed no aggression to either bird which was unusual given their very close proximity. Even though sea eagles can be sociable, they do normally have their limits. The darkest and youngest bird, a fledged chick from 2008, was most likely to have been their chick from last year given the lack of any animosity from the adults although the visibility was just not quite good enough to read the colour ring on her leg to be sure. But the identity of the other young eagle was not in doubt. She had yellow wing tags with the letter 'C'. She was their chick from 2006. She too had come home. For a young eagle to revisit her family home like this nearly three years after fledging and for the parents to accept her so readily made me wonder, not for the first time, about what really goes on in the mind of an eagle. We are told so often that a top predator like a sea eagle is so 'hard-wired' for pure instinct that there is little, if any scope for feeling or emotion. When you think about it, the noble head of an eagle is nearly all eyes and beak with not much room for anything else - like a long memory or a caring attachment to offspring long since fledged and independent. And yet looking at the photos of this small, reunited family, I couldn't help but let my own mind wander. Did the parents recognise a brief, familiar call from one or both chicks, unheard by their keen observers in the strong winds? The youngsters will have certainly been very familiar with this stretch of beach. It's where the parents take their chicks soon after fledging; a safe place for the young birds to explore and investigate as they learn the essentials of being a sea eagle. At a time of rough weather, when times are hard in mid winter, what better place to be than at home? Familiar, secure, comforting.

But the peaceful family scene, despite the strengthening storm, was not complete. Something was missing. All four eagles were looking around; up the loch, across to the wood, along the beach as if expecting another arrival. And then it dawned on me what that something was. Their chick from 2007 was missing. That chick was 'White G'. He was poisoned on a sporting estate in Angus, Tayside last May. Sadly, he would never be coming home. What a picture that would have made; maybe three generations of chicks with their parents!  Shocking, still, that we have been robbed of even that remotest of possibilities.

The field trip group, now numb with cold and with eyes watering from the wind, moved on to another birding spot leaving the four eagles to sit out the gale in the only way they knew how - with a sheer, rugged determination to survive. Soon the eagles would lift up from the shore and go their separate ways once more. The parents back to their nearby nest wood in the tall, secure trees and the two youngsters off to wherever the storm force winds would carry them. A simple, brief yet touching moment in their lives captured in our minds forever. The next morning I went back to the loch to see if this scene might happen again; maybe I could read the colour ring on last year's chick just to be absolutely sure - but no such luck. The wind and rain had gone. But so had the eagles.