🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of White-tailed eagle

Nature · Birds

White-tailed eagle

Resident · wingspan 200–245 cm

Haliaeetus albicilla — Accipitridae (hawks, kites and harriers)

The UK's largest bird of prey, a coastal fish- and carrion-eating eagle nicknamed the "flying barn door" for its huge rectangular wings. Persecuted to extinction as a British breeder — the last pair on Skye in 1916, the last bird shot on Shetland in 1918 — it was brought back from Norway to the Isle of Rum from 1975, and released on the Isle of Wight in 2019 for the first English breeding in more than two centuries.

How to spot them

  • ▸Enormous, broad, rectangular wings held flat — the 'flying barn door' silhouette
  • ▸Short, wedge-shaped tail, pure white in adults; huge yellow bill and protruding head
  • ▸Golden eagle by contrast has longer narrower wings in a shallow V, a small head and a longer dark tail
  • ▸Coastal: snatches fish from the surface, robs other birds, and feeds heavily on carrion
  • ▸Yelping, gull-like barking call from perched or displaying birds

How to know it

Nicknamed the 'flying barn door' for enormous rectangular wings held flat, with a short wedge-shaped white tail

White-tailed eagle — the UK's largest bird of prey.

Brought from Norway to the Isle of Rum from 1975; first bred again on Mull in 1985

The white-tailed eagle reintroduction, by the RSPB and the Nature Conservancy Council.

Released on the Isle of Wight in 2019, leading to the first English nest since 1780

White-tailed eagle — the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England project; the Sussex nest was in 2023.

The last British pair bred on Skye in 1916 and the last bird was shot on Shetland in 1918

White-tailed eagle — extinct as a UK breeder for most of the 20th century.

A head that protrudes further than the tail, and a bill so massive it identifies even a brown juvenile

White-tailed eagle against golden eagle — the reliable structural tell.

Reached a record 160 UK pairs in 2023; its eagles are reckoned worth some £5 million a year to one Hebridean island

White-tailed eagle — Rare Breeding Birds Panel 2023 report; Mull's wildlife tourism.

Also called the sea eagle and, in Gaelic tradition, iolaire suile na greine, 'the eagle with the sunlit eye'

White-tailed eagle — Haliaeetus albicilla, 'white-tailed sea eagle'.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Scientific name Haliaeetus albicilla: haliaeetus 'sea eagle', albicilla 'white-tailed'
  • •A record 160 breeding pairs in the UK in 2023, one of 15 species reaching record highs that year (Rare Breeding Birds Panel 2023 report, published 2025)
  • •Amber-listed in Birds of Conservation Concern 5 (2021) and on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
  • •82 Norwegian birds were released on Rum between 1975 and 1985; the first successful UK breeding followed on Mull in 1985
  • •Two earlier attempts failed: Glen Etive in 1959 and Fair Isle in 1968
  • •Later release phases were in Wester Ross (1993–98) and east Scotland around the Tay (2007–12)
  • •The Isle of Wight releases began in 2019, the first in England for some 240 years; a pair nested in Sussex in 2023, the first English nest since 1780
  • •It is larger than the golden eagle, with the biggest wingspan of any British bird
  • •Mull's sea eagles are estimated to bring around £5 million a year in wildlife tourism to the island

Drill it — 8 cards

1 / 8new card

Sources