White Tailed Sea Eagle.We had a great walk in Gougane Barra on Sunday (27th Dec 2009) last led by Joan Faherty. It was a lovely crisp day and a great reward for the 15 walkers who braved the poor road conditions on the way down. Early on in the walk we got a magnificent view of the wind farm near Lackabawn as well as a sighting of a lovely Grouse but the highlight apart from the walk itself was a sighting of a
White Tailed Sea Eagle about 1 Kilometer north of Bealick near the source of the Roughy River.
These birds are one of the biggest Eagles one can see and have a wingspan of 8 feet. We watched it ride the air currents for 10 minutes or so and it was a pity we had to move on. I entered the sighting on the web site http://www.goldeneagle.ie/ they have a section on the Sea Eagle and welcome the reporting of such sightings. These birds have been re-introduced to the Killarney national Park as chicks and some have been tracked by GPS and shown to have traveled as far as the north of Scotland and returned again.
One Male L had been gone for 8 months and returned to the Munster area. He was even sighted in Aghada in east Cork. (I dont know if it was Upper or Lower) there has been numerous confirmed sightings of him near Glengarriff on the Baurearagh ridge. This area is well known to our walkers. This well traveled chick is probably the same bird we saw on Sunday. If anybody on the walk got a reasonable picture to help identify the sighting as definite they would welcome it. You can send it through the section Report a Sighting on the web site or you can send it to me Noel Power and I will forward it on with your name associated with it..................Noel Power, BHC