The Eagles are coming. Or maybe not!

A lot of talk and sightings of Eagles recently in and around Cholsey and further afield in Oxfordshire.

With a recent posting on Facebook:

“Spotted this fella yesterday at the top of Westfield lane while heading for the A417. A bit strange that a Sea Eagle is in the middle of the countryside! He seems to have taken up residence” and refers to the photo below.

We have queried the post with relevant questions but there is no reply from the author as yet!

Hoax or basic cockup?

I also heard a woman on Friday pointing to a Red Kite and telling her grandson that it was an Eagle and that was not the first time I have heard this especially regarding Buzzards.

The photo accompanying the Facebook post was of an adult White-tailed Eagle taken from a Raptor persecution web page dated Sep 2014 and the photo attributed to Mike Watson and taken in Scotland.

Anyway back to the Eagles:

The only Eagle species that have occurred in Oxfordshire is White-tailed Eagle and Golden Eagle.

A Golden Eagle was shot at Bow Bridge, Cholsey in October 1865 and another Golden Eagle was shot in 1924 on Wantage Downs and is now in Reading Museum.

The WTE records were: 1 shot Wantage Downs 1793, 1 near Henley, 1849 and another 1894. There are some other records from the 19th century but the areas are now in Berkshire (Hungerford, Windsor, and Newbury).

Recent records relate to a 3rd – 4th year bird that turned up at Brill in Buckinghamshire and occasionally in Oxfordshire in 1983-84. This bird was deemed a truly wild bird and speculated that it was of Scandinavian origin.

Then a record of a young bird in September 2019 flying south over Cholsey and the same bird seen in March this year flying north over Cholsey Hill and leaving the county. We know it was the same bird as it had a satellite transmitter attached to it and its movements tracked.

This was the bird that took up a brief residency in the south east of Oxon and gathered some attention from the press. It related to a young bird from a release scheme on the Isle of Wight wandering around the south of England.

Eagle species are very rare vagrants in Oxon (and most of England) and if seen in Oxon should be reported to the OOS county recorder with a full description, a bona fide photo if possible, what optics used and any other circumstances to support the finding.

The photo in question. Hope the photographer does not mind us using it on this instance.