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One of the White-tailed Eagles arriving in Kerry Airport on Friday. Photo by Valerie O’Sullivan
THERE was a special arrival today at Kerry Airport.
Twenty-three White-tailed eagle chicks arrived in Farranfore as part of a long-term wildlife reintroduction project that is being led by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
The 2021 phase of this landmark collaboration to restore a native and once-extinct bird to Irish skies will see the release this year of the young eagles at four sites across Munster, including Killarney National Park, along the River Shannon, the lower Shannon estuary, and a site in Waterford.
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The chicks were collected this June from nests throughout the Trondheim area of West-Central Norway by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and flown to Kerry Airport.
They will be held for 6-8 weeks at purpose-built flight cages at four sites in Munster, where they will be cared for and monitored by NPWS, before being released into the wild in early-mid August.
As they mature, these chicks will join and strengthen the small Irish breeding population that has become established since the reintroduction programme began in 2007.
Last year, ten eagles were released along the River Shannon. Nine of those ten birds survived their first year, and currently they are dispersed at a number of locations in Ireland, and one is in Scotland.
Previously, 100 young White-tailed Eagles were released in Killarney National Park between 2007 and 2011. Birds from these releases subsequently dispersed widely throughout Ireland with first breeding in 2012 on Lough Derg, Co. Clare.
Since then a small breeding population of 8-10 pairs have successfully fledged over 30 chicks, with an additional five chicks likely to fledge into the wild in Munster in the next few weeks.
