Monday to Friday 21 - 25 February 2005 3.45-4.00pm
This dramatic series follows the lives of three pairs of white-tailed sea eagles as they struggle to survive and raise their chicks in Scotland.
Programme 1. Monday 21 February, 15.45-16.00
It's autumn and beyond John O'Groats in the Pentland Firth, a party of gulls hover near a fishing boat hoping for an easy meal. Suddenly they scatter. A cross-like shadow sweeps over the bow of the boat. It's a white-tailed sea eagle.
With the largest wingspan of any British bird, the sea eagle is a magnificent but uncommon sight. In this first programme, we hear about the history of these birds in Scotland and how they were driven to extinction by man's relentless persecution.
We travel back in time to the summer solstice in the year 3000BC when our Neolithic ancestors revered the sea eagle and buried their bones alongside the human dead. (The Tomb of the Eagles on the Island of Ronaldsay is one such site where archaeological evidence supports this theory).
Back in the present, we hear about the re-introduction programme that began in the 1970s to re-establish sea eagles on our shores. We join a pair of sea eagles on the Isle of Mull in their first stage of courtship. The story follows this pair as they struggle to survive the winter gales and find food in the icy conditions. Sea eagles are great scavengers and are far more likely to feed on carrion, such as dead fish, deer or seabirds, than hunt for themselves.
The programme ends with an acrobatic aerial display as a pair of sea eagles wheel and dive through the cold winter air performing their spectacular courtship display.
The Return of the Sea Eagle by John A. Love Published by Cambridge University Press 1983 ISBN 0 521 25513 9 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites
