A widowed white-tailed eagle and his new partner have produced two chicks after four years of flying alone, according to Irish conservationists.
The male eagle, whose previous partner passed away from bird flu in 2018, appears to be in love once more.
By constructing a nest on the Lough Derg shores in County Clare, the new pair established their territory in February.
Because of their large wingspan—more than 2 meters (6 feet), the white-tailed eagle is one of Ireland's rarest and largest raptors.
In 2008, the male eagle was initially released in County Kerry's Killarney National Park.
In 2020, his Norwegian partner and 15 other white-tailed eagle chicks were released in the Lough Derg region.
Despite having initially flown to Scotland, she came back six months later and eventually grew close to the older man who was now a bachelor.
Monitoring of the birds has been going on for years as part of a project by the Irish National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to reintroduce the white-tailed eagle to Ireland.
The project was important to the new chicks, according to Eamonn Meskell, its leader.
We're also happy to see this eagle, who we know well, form a new bond and begin a new family, he continued.
As it teaches people about eagle breeding behavior and the vulnerability of our reintroduction efforts, a story like this really brings our reintroduction program to life. " .
In the 1900s, the white-tailed eagle vanished from Britain and Ireland.
The male eagle and his former partner fledged a pair of chicks in 2013, marking the first white-tailed eagle hatching in Ireland in more than 110 years.
For the next four years, the pair raised fledged chicks until the female passed away.
In recent days, three additional white-tailed eagle chicks that had been raised by one of the male eagle's offspring from its previous partner were also marked by keen-eyed NPWS staff.
In the early 1900s, the white-tailed eagle, also referred to as the sea eagle, went extinct in the UK and Ireland.
Only after a 1975–1976 project for the reintroduction of the species in Scotland's west did the species come back.