An eagle known as “Eddie” from Glengarriff in west Cork has been found dead on the Dingle Peninsula in Co Kerry, it has been announced.
The white-tailed sea eagle, whose parents were introduced into Ireland as fledglings from Norway in 2007, was born in Glengarriff in 2016 and became the first wild sea eagle to fledge in Co. Cork in over 100 years.
After leaving his nest site on Garnish Island in late 2016, he was sighted at several locations on the north side of the Beara Peninsula which runs into Kerry during his first winter.
Clare Heardman, the conservation ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) provided an update on the Glengarriff Woods Nature Reserve social media page on Sunday.
Since the Spring of 2017, there had been sightings of Eddie on the nearby Iveragh peninsula in Kerry and afterwards he had remained around Dingle Bay and the Blasket as well as Tralee and Brandon Bay.
However, he had not been seen since June.
The last sighting of him had been at Fermoyle Beach, not far from where his remains were discovered in June by a Czech forestry worker in a Coillte plantation near Cloghane in the west Kerry Gaeltacht.
Eddie’s movements were tracked by the public and the reports and photographswere “invaluable” as he was not tracked by satellite tagging, unlike several other of the white-tailed eagles, Ms Heardman said.
It was not possible at this stage to say what caused Eddie’s death.
Meanwhile, Dr Allan Mee who has managed the largely successful reintroduction project said that while it was possible Eddie died of natural causes, such as starvation, most such natural eagle mortality occurred in the first year of life.
The likelihood reduced the older they got .
“However, human-related mortality, for example poisoning, can equally impact all age classes,” Dr Mee said.
A number of the eagles in the programme, managed by the Golden Eagle Trust and the NPWS, have ranged as far as Scotland and Northern Ireland from their base in Killarney.
Around 13 have been poisoned.