ANOTHER magnificent raptor, hunted to extinction in Ireland by the 20th century, features this week again after a chance sighting as it flew northeast from Lower Erne over the forests and hills around Tyrone's Lough Bradan on its onward journey, accompanied and harassed by distressed gulls and corvids visibly unhappy at its presence.
The juvenile white-tailed eagle was probably one of the Irish-born birds from the ambitious reintroduction programme for the species, begun in 2007, by the Golden Eagle Trust and National parks and Wildlife Service.
The initial phase involved bringing in 100 Norwegian born chicks for release in Killarney National Park over four years. Since then, after successful breeding by mature birds began in 2012, around thirty-five Irish born chicks have fledged across counties Cork, Kerry, Clare, Galway and Tipperary, some of which are now also beginning to breed. A second phase of reintroduction began in 2020 to bolster the existing population.
Seeing Ireland's largest bird of prey recalled former Fianna Fáil leader and three-time Taoiseach, the late Charles Haughey. Although a figure of controversy for many throughout his long political career, his role in highlighting and promoting environmental issues is often overlooked. In 1988, he established the National Heritage Council which would formulate local and national strategies for the conservation of natural and built environments.
David Cabot, writer, ornithologist, and one-time special adviser on environmental affairs to Haughey, wrote of him in family papers: "His love for the sea brought him in close contact with the natural environment, marine creatures and all types of sea birds".
Cabot went on to say how in 1990, when Ireland assumed the presidency of the Council of Ministers of the European Union, Haughey made environmental protection a priority, culminating in the Dublin Declaration on the Environment being adopted at the summit meeting later that year.
He also gives great credit for another "bold initiative" the then Taoiseach took in "the declaration of the Whale and Dolphin Sanctuary in Irish marine territorial waters, the first time any European State had declared such a sanctuary".
After purchasing the island of Inishvickillane, Co Kerry in the 1970s, Haughey introduced a small herd of red deer there from mountains around Killarney National Park to ensure the genetic purity of the species, threatened by interbreeding with sika deer.
In 1992, the Taoiseach also attempted to re-introduce the white-tailed eagle back to the island, one of its historical breeding haunts and close to where a vagrant bird had been seen by a lighthouse keeper on the nearby Skelligs Rock in 1946. Two young eagles were brought from Germany to Inishvickillane, but the project was unsuccessful with the released birds soon disappearing.
Known as 'the sea eagle', Iolar mara is our largest bird of prey with its broad rectangular wings spanning over two metres. It feeds mainly on fish, caught after a spectacular dive, small birds and carrion. The adult birds have a wedge-shaped white tail, pale head and yellow bill.
Their breeding territories are usually around coasts and large inland lakes with some of the introduced birds and their offspring having already travelled north along the west and up the Shannon River to counties Fermanagh, Donegal and, as I witnessed, Tyrone.
Thrilled at seeing this spectacular eagle fly over local hills, I wondered had Haughey's reintroduction efforts back in the 90s played a part, sowing a seed for the more successful process fifteen years later.
Perhaps too there was much truth in the words he quoted from Othello in his Dáil resignation speech, "I have done the State some service, and they know it".
