Country diary: Hoy sea eagles fledge two chicks

Hoy, Orkney: The unmistakable, broad-winged adults soared majestically high above. Now there are fourA couple of weeks ago a welcome email arrived from the RSPB announcing that the only pair of sea eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) on the island of Hoy in Orkney had fledged two chicks. Hooray! The great erne (Anglo-Saxon for sea eagle) is back where once it reigned supreme.Mesolithic and bronze-age tombs hold stark evidence of the white-tailed eagle's former omnipresence in the archipelago. In 1958 a farmer discovered a small stone chamber containing 30 human skulls and the talons and bones of about 14 sea eagles. Were eagle skulls placed in the tomb as totems perhaps, orwere carrion-eating sea eagles required to strip the flesh from laid-out human corpses before the bodies were interred? Were the great birds thought to carry the spirit of the departed to the otherworld, or perhaps placed there to guard the dead in the afterlife? An evident significance existed between those early farmers and the eagles. Continue reading...