Three wild white-tailed eagle chicks fledge in Dorset and Sussex

Two white-tailed eagle chicks fledged from a nest in Sussex and one in Dorset this summer, all three reared by eagles released since 2019 by Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation. Five released pairs are now established in southern England, and the project has expanded to Exmoor National Park, where six more birds were set free this year for the first time.

Which pairs bred successfully this year?

The Sussex chicks, ringed GE36 and GE37, are both males and the offspring of eagles released in 2020. Their parents, G405 and G471, have bred every year since 2023.

The single male chick in Dorset, GE38, is the second the pair G463 and G466 have reared – a result the team calls all the more remarkable because the adult male has flown with one leg since losing the other about five years ago. All three chicks were fitted with satellite tags so the project can follow them as they disperse.

Fish tops the menu at the monitored nests

For the first time, specialist cameras placed near the nests let the team log the breeding pairs’ diet in detail. More than 300 records of food carried in by the parents were collected, and fish was by far the most frequent item.

Steve Egerton-Read, white-tailed eagle project officer for Forestry England, said: “It’s been another long summer of watching and hoping that the eagles would be successful in breeding and raising young. There is nothing quite like that moment of seeing the chicks hatch and first appear in the nest.”

“This year we were able to monitor every item of food coming into the nests and can see that fish is by far the favoured item for these wetland loving birds,” he added.

Why does the project credit landowners and farmers?

White-tailed eagles are Britain’s largest birds of prey, with a wingspan of up to 2.5m. The species was once widespread across England but was driven to extinction by persecution, the last pair breeding in southern England in 1780.

Roy Dennis OBE, founder of the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, said the fourth consecutive year of fledged chicks “shows what can be achieved by very skilled wildlife managers”, with three further established pairs expected to add to the total in the next few years.

“Restoring a species takes many years and requires the support of a wide range of communities and organisations, in particular landowners and farmers. I would like to thank everyone who is supporting the project and supporting essential nature recovery in this way,” he said.

What happens next

The project team will track the three tagged chicks by satellite as they begin to explore the landscape, as it has followed earlier fledglings across the UK. To date 56 young eagles have been released, including five this summer from the team’s base on the Isle of Wight and the six on Exmoor, where the new phase is led by the foundation’s Zoe Smith.

The reintroduction runs under licence from Natural England, and the young birds are collected from wild nests in Scotland under a NatureScot licence. The full announcement can be read on the Forestry England website.