The white-tailed eagle also has a heavier bill than the golden eagle, and a bright yellow eye, giving rise to its Gaelic name of iolaire-sùil-na-grèine, or “the eagle with the sunlit eye.” It tends to be more coastal in distribution than the golden eagle, feeding on fish, rabbits and hares, and seabirds. The white-tailed eagle will also take carrion, particularly in winter. Persecution accounted for the bird’s demise earlier this century. In 1916 the last wild nesting sea eagles were shot at their eyrie on the Isle of Skye, resulting in their extinction as a British breeding species. Another lone surviving bird in the Shetland Isles was also shot and killed in 1918. The species is now protected by law. There were various unsuccessful attempts to re-introduce the species into Scotland, but a major programme was commenced in 1975 by the then Nature Conservancy Council, and involved importing young birds from Norway to a release site on the Isle of Rum. Over the following ten years, 83 chicks were released into the wild from Rum, culminating in the first successful Scottish nesting in 1985. A further 59 Norwegian birds were re-introduced by Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds from a second release site over the next few years, but it took until 1996 for a wild-bred Scottish pair to fledge its own chicks. There are now thought to be approximately 20 territorial pairs in Scotland, rearing about a dozen chicks a year on average. The year 2000 marked the 25th anniversary of the re-introduction programme. MORE