The longest day

Even by west coast standards, it had been an unseasonally violent and stormy night. And it had been raining continuously for 24 hours before that. It was almost mid summer's day for goodness sake! Lying in bed and listening to the storm raging outside at 3am, your mind runs riot and there's nothing you can do about it. I knew there were big eagle chicks hunkered down flat in the nests all around Mull. They were too big to be brooded and protected by the adults who would be roosting nearby. The chicks, now fully feathered and almost full grown, would just have to do their best to sit tight, cling on and not get blown out.

The winds had eased by 7am and I must have drifted off, at last getting some sleep. It's never nice being woken by the 'phone ringing and that morning's jolt into the new day was even more unwelcome after a bad night. It was an unfamiliar voice: "Oh hello, sorry to disturb you but we've been watching a sea eagle nest from our holiday cottage and we've just looked this morning and , well, we think it's gone..." His voice trailed off having not taken a breath. Minutes later having established where he was calling from, I was in the landrover and setting off on the hour's journey through single track, wet lanes avoiding startled red deer and sheep. Only then realising I'd had no breakfast, not made a flask and I was heading to a part of the island with no local shop. Not a good combo so far this morning. All I could think of was that a few days previously I had watched two big, strong sea eagle chicks bouncing up and down on their cliff face nest. They probably had another 2-3 weeks to go I remember thinking, before their maiden flight. All I could hear was the caller's voice "...we think it's gone...".

I drove as close as I could get and switched off the engine. Everything seemed so peaceful after the noise and screaming winds of last night. Now the oystercatchers were piping, curlews were calling and sheep and cattle were being fed out in the fields and on the beach. I got the telescope on the tripod and focussed on the distant sea cliff, still a mile or more away. With a thumping heart, I looked again and again at where the nest had been. That huge, bundle of sticks and branches, as big as a bed, had gone, wrenched from the cliff face in the teeth of the gale. I could see broken tree trunks, boulders balancing on the edge of new rock falls and just a new, bare, shiny outcrop where the nest had been. I tilted the 'scope down, down the cliff face to the base and scanned around. Surely nothing could have survived this. The terror for those chicks would have been unimaginable: pitch black, storm force winds, lashing rain and suddenly you're falling through the air. My eye noticed a brownish blob at the base of the cliff - just one. It wasn't moving but I was too far away to see any detail. There was nothing else for it but to hike in - that would take another hour at least. To lose two chicks in this way, so close to fledging was just terrible. I couldn't put it off any longer. Wellies on, slam the landrover door and I set off. It was going to be a very long day.

Continues tomorrow...

'Animal 24:7' BBC Two 2.15pm Thursday 4 September: Mull and the white-tailed eagles