The Booted Eagle saga part II

Earlier in this series of birding tales, I covered the extraordinary weekend in April 1999 that included finally seeing the Booted Eagle at Lady’s Island Lake, Wexford, at the third attempt (having dipped once in Dublin in March and previously in Wexford that month).

But of course, the Booted Eagle story doesn’t end there. It was claimed a number of times that April, in various locations including in Waterford and Down, prompting the editors of Birding World to print that Ireland ‘was awash with Booted Eagle sightings’. It would be unkind to suggest that this dismissive attitude was because they hadn’t seen it yet, and scepticism about some of the sightings was rife, but as one of the sightings was ours and they certainly knew who had seen it that day, safe to say some of us were not that impressed with them at the time. Be that as it may, it headed north and later turned up on Rathlin Island (where the BW eds did catch up with it), then went missing.

After a bit of a gap, punctuated only by a brief sighting in Kent, suddenly, in late October, it was in Cornwall! OK, so we’d seen it in Ireland so it was happily pencilled in on British and Irish List (pending acceptance, of which more later), but now it was also a first for Britain. (To pre-empt any arguments, Rathlin Island is in the UK, but Northern Ireland is not part of Britain for bird recording purposes. Nor is the Isle of Man, but that’s another story.)

Paul and James dashed down to Drift Reservoir and saw it. I was only an hour or so behind them, but dipped. There was a bit of keystone cops incident later where several carloads of birders all dashed down a country lane and there were plenty of happy ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ while watching a raptor sat in a field, but it was very obviously a Buzzard, so I left them to it.

A few days later, I went down to look again, and took old friends Stuart Holdsworth and Alastair Stevenson with me this time. The Booted Eagle was still around, but it was being a sod again, drifting around the Toe, but mostly around St Buryan. Touring the area in hope, we had just passed the turning for Lamorna and were approaching the Merry Maidens stone circle when the bloody thing flew low across the road directly in front of us! I recognised it instantly and screeched to a halt in a gateway so the boys could leap out and get a good view as it flew low north down the field, mobbed by corvids. Result!

It stayed in Cornwall for most of November, then disappeared. After a few months of radio silence on it, I think we all assumed it had gone. Then, in March 2000, I was in Poole looking for a Green-winged Teal when the pager beeped once more. The first time I think I had ever seen Mega and Somerset in the same message – the Booted Eagle was over Shapwick Heath, now! Panic! I made it back to the Levels as soon as I could, abandoned the car in the car park at Ashcott Corner, and ran. The first birders I met said ‘Yes, it’s still here’ – great! A short time later I was getting great views of it circling over Meare Heath – closer views than in Ireland, and a lot longer views than in Cornwall. All that running around after it, and I get my best views on the Avalon Marshes – what are the odds? A few days later it had moved to Chew Valley Lake and I saw it there too, just for the hell of it.

But after all that – twitching it seven times, seeing it four times, in four different counties across two countries – I still can’t tick it. It has never been accepted either side of the water. A joint press release by BOURC, IRBC, and NIBARC (representing Northern Ireland) says that they weren’t prepared to accept it for a number of reasons, including feather wear, the time of year it was originally found, and concerns about their ability to make long sea crossings. (See full text here: http://www.irbc.ie/announcements/announce3.php.) Rumours abounded at the time that political sensitivities meant that the BOURC of the time didn’t want to be seen to disagree with IRBC about a bird which turned up in Ireland first, and so were not prepared to accept the record into Category A for that reason also. Whatever the truth of it, it is frustrating, but while I don’t always agree with records committee decisions, I abide by them, for good or ill – I’ve gained often enough out of them. The committees may change their minds over time, especially if another should turn up. Twitching is a long game anyway – I can wait.