February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The chicks were hatched just days ago at a nest site in Glenveagh National Park in the northern reaches of the county.
The majestic birds of prey were once common sights in Irish skies, but hunting and trapping wiped them out. The last breeding pair hatched chicks in 1912, the year that the Titanic sank.
A few birds were reintroduced back into the wild in 2001 and over the intervening years the Golden Eagle Trust has managed to reach a point where there are now five pairs of eagles with established territories in Donegal, as well as an additional lone bird.
The Irish government’s department of the environment has stated that a second pair of Golden Eagles is presently incubating at another nest site in Donegal, though no chicks have yet hatched.
“We have an anxious few months ahead. It would be very encouraging if the pair can manage to successfully rear a chick again and if everything goes well, they could even rear both chicks in Glenveagh,” Lorc_n O’Toole, manager of the Golden Eagle Trust project told the Irish Times.
“Hopefully come August, the occasional visitor walking down the Glenveagh path may have a brief encounter with a family party of three, or even four, soaring golden eagles,” he said.
“Once again we would like to highlight the support the project has received from the vast majority of farmers and people living in the hills of Donegal.
The problem of farmers leaving out poisoned carcasses, often as bait for foxes, has been a major problem as Ireland attempts to repopulate its skies with golden eagles and white tailed sea eagles, which have been reintroduced in Kerry, but which have been having a hard time becoming reestablished because a number of birds have been killed after eating tainted bait.