looduskalender.ee

Estonia’s oldest ringed white-tailed eagle is Kotkas, the eagle of the Looduskaitseühing, Estonian Nature Protection Society, ringed by the society’s founder Einar Tammur in 1985 and photographed in 2005.

On the east coast of Sweden, in the county of Västerbotten near the city of Umeå a white-tailed eagle was observed last week feeding on the carcass of an animal. From the leg rings it turned out that here was the oldest white-tailed eagle in the world – the bird was ringed in Sodanküla in Finland in July 1980. The age of the white-tailed eagle is thirty years and seven months.

 

Records from earlier observations show that the same white-tailed eagle has wintered in Sweden already as a young bird. In December 1984 it was seen south of Stockholm. The next ten observations are reported from Gävleborg county in Sweden. Thirteen years have passed since the latest observation before the present!

 

Until now the oldest white-tailed eagle was of Norwegian origin, 29 years and 10 months; this bird was found dead.