Rare ‘once in a lifetime’ eagle sighting over Peterborough

An extremely rare white-tailed eagle has been spotted in the skies above Peterborough.

The huge bird – which was once extinct in this country – was sighted by wildlife photographer Karen Aylin as she enjoyed a morning walk at Nene Park on Bank Holiday Monday.

“I was at Chesterton and I was photographing buzzards because there's loads of buzzards there,” she explained, “and I just looked up, and I saw something in the distance because the crows were attacking it.

“I thought, first of all, that it was a buzzard, and then it circled and it banked, and I saw it,” she said.

“I thought it was an eagle and I knew it was something special,” she recalled.

Subsequent data from the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, which tracks birds of prey, confirmed the eagle to be a juvenile white-tailed eagle (G641) born in West Sussex last year.

Information from her satellite tracker has revealed she travelled through Northamptonshire, before her brief sojourn over Ferry Meadows, then on to Norfolk.

Massive birds of prey with mighty wingspans between 2-3 metres, white-tailed eagles were once widespread across England. Unfortunately, human persecution caused them to become domestically extinct.

While they have gradually been reintroduced to the UK since 1975, most sightings of them tend to be by the coast or in Scotland.

While the encounter at Ferry Meadows lasted little more than ten seconds, Karen is still buzzing from her memorable sighting. “It really was a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” she said.

“I was very, very lucky; right place, right time, definitely.”