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Golden eagles' return to English skies

32 points

by techterrier

3 days ago

| past

| 4 comments

| bbc.co.uk

| HN

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cannonpr

4 minutes ago

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The red kites are fun, I do enjoy seeing them and they are a great addition to biodiversity. However they also on occasion bring a packed lunch (see pigeon) to my garden, upon which time I either have to watch a somewhat horrifying nature documentary live, or in some cases they just leave an injured pigeon that I get guilt tripped into patching up and rehabilitating… I’m somewhat split about the situation…

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mjfisher

3 hours ago

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The reintroduction of Red Kites to the UK has been a huge success. I don't get particularly excited by birds normally, but regularly seeing such large creatures (almost 2m wingspans) curving through the sky is nothing short of majestic. They're almost reminiscent of dragons.

I wonder if I'll get to feel the same about golden eagles soon too.

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Bender

1 hour ago

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I don't get particularly excited by birds normally

Same. Sometimes one of my deer will get thwacked by a car just hard enough it stumbles up my driveway and falls over. There will be 3 golden eagles and 2 bald eagles fighting over it. The first time I saw them I had a double-take ... I swore at first I saw men sitting on my driveway fence. Golden eagles are massive and quite awe inspiring to watch. When they fight over road kill they stretch their wings out entirely.

Each time I have to make sure I still have an outdoor cat and I have to keep an eye on him until they are done. They seem to only eat the soft bits and leave the muscle meat for the ravens. Then the deer turns into a fly factory which I have to spray.

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hermitcrab

1 hour ago

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We have a pair of kites that regularly land in a tree a few meters from my garden. They are beautiful looking creatures (even if not very beautiful sounding). It always lifts my spirits to see them. I hope the reintroduction of Eagles is similarly successful.

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metalman

11 minutes ago

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I have large lungs, and can be very loud, and where I live the eagles ridge soar whilst going from one place to another, at just a bit higher than the tree tops, mostly baldies here with the ocasional golden, and for fun I started, belowing EEEGULL strait up at them, and they do a double take WTF, pull a hard wing over to get a better look and the finnish there turn, and blast off down wind, so if you get the chance, punking eagles is a blast

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Lio

40 minutes ago

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> Britain's second largest bird of prey

I don’t see it mentioned in the article but was our largest bird of prey?

EDIT: found it; the white tailed eagle[1].

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/white-tailed-eagl...

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Peritract

3 hours ago

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[flagged]

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happytoexplain

2 hours ago

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Just FYI, you should have sympathy.

There's an enormous difference between weighing the pros and cons and coming to a different conclusion than somebody else, and having no sympathy for somebody else.

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Peritract

2 hours ago

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Sympathy doesn't simply mean "understanding"; that's one small aspect of the definition of a more complex word that also denotes emotional reflection.

Having weighed the pros and cons, I have come to the conclusion that the correct amount of (emotional) sympathy for the position of "we should kill all the eagles because farmers deserve only endless profits, never (minor) costs" is infinitesimal.

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sophacles

1 hour ago

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Just FYI...

There's an enormous difference between having no sympathy for an idea and having no sympathy for a person.

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heyitsmedotjayb

3 hours ago

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You say that - but its not your pocket being picked... when you have to put food on your families table, you probably aren't as worried about some bird nobodies ever heard of. No farmers - No food.

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Peritract

2 hours ago

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1. Eagles are very well-known.

2. Farms that keep sheep have more than one lamb.

3. The government doesn't, and shouldn't, intervene to protect people against every single risk they face in business.

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heyitsmedotjayb

2 hours ago

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1) This particular spotted big breasted eagle is hardly known and of little importance culturally. 2) Farm margins are very thin and its not up to you to dictate what an acceptable loss is. 3) Government has successfully in the past used hunting bounties to tame wilderness and increase farming productivity. The eradication of wolves in the great plains turned unremarkable scrub land into the most successful and productive era in farming the earth has ever seen. Maybe think about that next time you have a bite to eat and thank your local farmer.

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9dev

2 hours ago

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If a farm is economically endangered by a single-digit number of animals killed by natural predators, they have vastly more immediate problems to take care of.

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onlypassingthru

2 hours ago

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Wasn't the eradication of wolves just the natural consequence of destroying the food source and way of life of the natives? Gotta get those people dead or moved if you're going to steal their land, amirite!

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Peritract

2 hours ago

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The golden eagle is one of the most culturally significant birds worldwide; it's ridiculous to dismiss that.

There was nothing unremarkable about the great plains (note the name); they didn't produce the crop yield that you value, sure, but that's not the only possible metric to measure anything against.

I think farmers are great; I don't think we should exterminate countless species to save them from one of the extremely-predictable externalities of their jobs.

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mopsi

2 hours ago

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4. Farmers are already facing great difficulties from economic shocks like Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and Hormuz in a short span of time, and further strain is unwelcome.

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9dev

2 hours ago

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There will always be some reason against a measure that doesn’t immediately benefit humans in the short term but yields benefits in the long term.

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Peritract

2 hours ago

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Eagles are also dealing with other stuff (arguably more significant-- e.g. habitat loss), but that's an irrelevance to this issue.

The potential predations of a small number of eagles nationally will make very little difference to the enormous number of sheep kept by a large number of farmers. They can handle the strain, and if it's really somehow too much, there are mitigations short of extinction available to them.