As a cub reporter I was sent to Glasgow airport to meet ten VIPs from Norway. Their destination was somewhere in the Highlands, but the location was a closely guarded secret.
The arrivals were a batch of scrawny, squawking sea eagle chicks, aged about 12 weeks. They heralded the start of a programme promoting the reintroduction of extinct species to Scotland. The last pair had bred on Skye in 1916, sea eagles having been hounded to virtual extinction in Victorian times.
The birds take five years to reach maturity and it has been a long, slow, perilous process but there are now about 40 breeding pairs. These white-tailed eagles are Scotland’s largest bird of prey. If you catch a glimpse of one wheeling and soaring
