Foals taken by sea eagles?

Burnerbee

Burnerbee

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Burnerbee said:
Whatever has happened here, it’s very sad for the mares involved - but foals being picked up by sea eagles???

www.bbc.com

Farmer claims sea eagles snatched his five Shetland pony foals - BBC News

The ponies vanished from the hillside croft without a trace over a nine-week period.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

….although golden eagles do kill ibex in the Alps….

https://share.google/Ue40uf3GRSqLvYtWx
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Highly likely - sea eagles easily capable of picking up a little foal, and once they know where the food source is - will be back - until those foals become too large to carry.
It’s the same with lambs, well-documented and filmed.
 
Some Sea Eagles have indeed been documented to take lambs, but even though it might be a big loss for a specific sheep owner, I've always heard that overall, lambs are not a big part of Sea Eagles diets. I googled to see if I remembered wrong, and found e.g. two studies from Scotland: in one study less than 2% of lamb deaths were directly linked to Sea Eagle predation, and in the other study they found that about 6% of the remains in Sea Eagle's nests came from lambs.
I've also read that Sea Eagles are more akin to vultures in both habits and lineage, than to Golden Eagles, and therefore more likely to be drawn to prey killed or wounded either by accident or by other predators.

If a Sea Eagle was involved, perhaps they just saw the first foal, and viewed it as a prey of suitable size, but maybe something had happened to it, making it more vulnerable. Then, as Exasperated basically said in the reply above, once they had taken the first foal, they opportunistically came back for 4 other foals.
However, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to discretely steal 5 Shetland foals, I would carry them away one by one. Herding them together, and up onto some type of transport would risk leaving too many traces, and carrying more than one wriggly foal at a time would definitely be my limit.

Regardless what happened, it's a sad loss for the mares, and their owner.
 
Exasperated said:
Highly likely - sea eagles easily capable of picking up a little foal, and once they know where the food source is - will be back - until those foals become too large to carry.
It’s the same with lambs, well-documented and filmed.
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Well, it's not exactly well documented and filmed or there wouldn't still be debate about it, and I still haven't seen a video in which it's clear that predation is happening, rather than scavenging. 10kg does sound very heavy for a bird to actually fly off with and particularly to carry for any distance. Why didn't he bring them into a small area and put up a trail cam once 2 or 3 had disappeared? I'd be wanting to know what was going on if they were mine.
 
I think the researchers said they would probably be too heavy and no remains of foals had been found near nests so more likely something else.

Foxes kill lambs a lot - so presumably by the lamb logic foxes could also be the culprit - if not people nicking them which would be even more likely. Poor things.
 
I don’t quite buy it. All the biologists whose pieces I read suggested a sea eagle could not physically carry a 10kg foal because of the biomechanics of their flight.

You think after you lost the first one or two under allegedly mysterious circumstances, you’d move them into the barn, or a different paddock, or put up a camera…or something.

The golden in the video was driving the ibex off a cliff; it wasn’t lifting it up and carrying it off.

I love sea eagles, and people need to learn how to live with nature. We are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate, and as nice as it is for farmers when there are no apex predators around (though I don’t believe for a minute they were responsible for this one), it’s actually really bad for the ecosystem and indeed planet as a whole.
 
Caol Ila said:
I don’t quite buy it. All the biologists whose pieces I read suggested a sea eagle could not physically carry a 10kg foal because of the biomechanics of their flight.

You think after you lost the first one or two under allegedly mysterious circumstances, you’d move them into the barn, or a different paddock, or put up a camera…or something.

The golden in the video was driving the ibex off a cliff; it wasn’t lifting it up and carrying it off.

I love sea eagles, and people need to learn how to live with nature. We are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate, and as nice as it is for farmers when there are no apex predators around (though I don’t believe for a minute they were responsible for this one), it’s actually really bad for the ecosystem and indeed planet as a whole.
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I just wondered about the possibility of the eagle dragging the foals off the cliff (as shown in the background of the Croft in question). Poor foals, whatever happened to them.
 
Burnerbee said:
I just wondered about the possibility of the eagle dragging the foals off the cliff (as shown in the background of the Croft in question). Poor foals, whatever happened to them.
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I guess it’s possibility but so is alien abduction. For such dramatic behaviour to happen five times, you’d think someone would have seen it. That doesn’t look like much of a cliff, and one would expect to see some evidence on the rocks below the field. That is not a sheer drop straight into the sea, so some bits will be non tidal.

If I thought my ponies were being chased over a sea cliff, I might move them or put in a fence….Maybe by the second or third incident….
 
Ill throw my 2 cents it.
I have and do own birds of prey.
Also rehab wild birds of prey and corvids.
Sea Eagles are scavengers for the main part, if they are taking foals/lambs they are probably already dead and pulled apart.
Buzzards weight around 500g and cant carry much more than a half rabbit, sea eagles are not much more the 4/5kg in weight and can't carry much more than that.
So to say their carrying off foals I highly doubt it.

I have flown a Golden eagle and they are bigger than sea eagles and even they struggle with a big rabbit.
 
Burnttoast said:
Are they heavier/bigger-bodied? I've seen golden eagles mobbing a sea eagle and they look a lot smaller on the wing.
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Our golden is a bigger bodied bird than a Sea Eagle. But Sea Eagles have a larger wingspan.
Saying that they can only carry roughly their own bodyweight, so like maybe 8kg for sea eagles.

So unless their shetland foals I highly doubt they will be taking foals.
Lambs is fair enough. But not pony foal!
 
CastlelackSportHorses said:
Our golden is a bigger bodied bird than a Sea Eagle. But Sea Eagles have a larger wingspan.
Saying that they can only carry roughly their own bodyweight, so like maybe 8kg for sea eagles.

So unless their shetland foals I highly doubt they will be taking foals.
Lambs is fair enough. But not pony foal!
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They are Shetland foals, on South or North Uist so won't be human thieves.
 
The white-tailed eagle is regarded as our biggest raptor and has a huge wingspan, but there's not a massive difference between the maximum weight of a golden eagle and a white-tailed eagle. Upper end of the scale for a female would be around 6 - 7kg.

I don't claim to be an expert on Shetland foals, but I would have thought that 10kg is pretty light - possibly a small-ish newborn. There was someone who bred miniature Shetties in Lancs where we used to link and after a few weeks the foals were pretty chunky (and quite agile!) - much too big for any native bird of prey to carry off.

After 5 weeks any Shetland foal is going to weigh considerably more than 10kg. Studies on how much eagles can lift suggest that there is absolutely no way they could carry off three times its own body weight. Even a Harpie eagle, which is the strongest bird in the world, can't carry more than half its own bodyweight and would struggle with a 15kg foal.
CastlelackSportHorses said:
Sea Eagles are scavengers for the main part, if they are taking foals/lambs they are probably already dead and pulled apart.
Buzzards weight around 500g and cant carry much more than a half rabbit, sea eagles are not much more the 4/5kg in weight and can't carry much more than that.
So to say their carrying off foals I highly doubt it.
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Agreed - like many raptors, they feed mainly on carrion.

What we have to consider is that there is a group of people who absolutely hate the white-tailed eagles and want them eradicated. The farmer in question is probably one of those people.
But as other people have said, if a foal went missing surely you'd do your best to protect the others?

There are white-tailed and golden eagles in the area where we live (the goldens are much more elusive). There are also lots of sheep/lambs. There isn't any evidence that farmers are losing live, healthy lambs to eagles. Corvids and other scavengers will move in on a dead lamb but that's pretty much it.

millikins said:
I also read but don't know how true, that eagles will drive prey too big to carry over cliffs.
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Golden eagles will definitely do this - my OH has actually seen them drive deer over high/rocky ground. They will then feed on the carcass.
But there is no way that an entire dead foal, let alone five, would disappear without a trace overnight or even a few days. There would certainly be evidence.


Also, just to say that there are a number of AI videos doing the rounds showing things like eagles carrying off lion cubs etc etc and then being killed. We just need to be aware of the power of AI!
 
millikins said:
They are Shetland foals, on South or North Uist so won't be human thieves.
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There are people on South Uist.

CastlelackSportHorses said:
Ill throw my 2 cents it.
I have and do own birds of prey.
Also rehab wild birds of prey and corvids.
Sea Eagles are scavengers for the main part, if they are taking foals/lambs they are probably already dead and pulled apart.
Buzzards weight around 500g and cant carry much more than a half rabbit, sea eagles are not much more the 4/5kg in weight and can't carry much more than that.
So to say their carrying off foals I highly doubt it.

I have flown a Golden eagle and they are bigger than sea eagles and even they struggle with a big rabbit.
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That's just awesome. What's it like to fly a golden?

millikins said:
I also read but don't know how true, that eagles will drive prey too big to carry over cliffs.
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I had a look at my OS map of South Uist. I dont know where exactly this chap's croft is (other than being somewhere at the end of the road to Lochskipport), but there is only one tiny section in that area of coastline that has a steep 30m drop into the sea. The rest looks pretty tame. If you had concerns your animals were being driven over that drop (if indeed that is even part of his pasture), wouldn't you just shft them or put up a fence?
 
Caol Ila said:
There are people on South Uist.



That's just awesome. What's it like to fly a golden?



I had a look at my OS map of South Uist. I dont know where exactly this chap's croft is (other than being somewhere at the end of the road to Lochskipport), but there is only one tiny section in that area of coastline that has a steep 30m drop into the sea. The rest looks pretty tame. If you had concerns your animals were being driven over that drop (if indeed that is even part of his pasture), wouldn't you just shft them or put up a fence?
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Goldens are fab, but heavy.
I have had the privilege of ringing a White tailed sea eagle before release, their huge.

It's mainly Harris hawks and Gyrs we fly here, and some Eagle owls.
 
FinnishLapphund said:
Some Sea Eagles have indeed been documented to take lambs, but even though it might be a big loss for a specific sheep owner, I've always heard that overall, lambs are not a big part of Sea Eagles diets. I googled to see if I remembered wrong, and found e.g. two studies from Scotland: in one study less than 2% of lamb deaths were directly linked to Sea Eagle predation, and in the other study they found that about 6% of the remains in Sea Eagle's nests came from lambs.
I've also read that Sea Eagles are more akin to vultures in both habits and lineage, than to Golden Eagles, and therefore more likely to be drawn to prey killed or wounded either by accident or by other predators.

If a Sea Eagle was involved, perhaps they just saw the first foal, and viewed it as a prey of suitable size, but maybe something had happened to it, making it more vulnerable. Then, as Exasperated basically said in the reply above, once they had taken the first foal, they opportunistically came back for 4 other foals.
However, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to discretely steal 5 Shetland foals, I would carry them away one by one. Herding them together, and up onto some type of transport would risk leaving too many traces, and carrying more than one wriggly foal at a time would definitely be my limit.

Regardless what happened, it's a sad loss for the mares, and their owner.
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They have been documented taking lambs and kid goats, it was one of the reasons they were so heavily persecuted, pretty much to extinction round UK coastline.
To be sure, traditional Shetland sheep and lambs were much smaller than today’s commercial breeds, whereas today’s miniature Shetlands are a lot tinier than the standard ones - not clear how large or how old the missing foals were; and whereas fatstock is often weighed, foals aren’t, unless being monitored for illness.
No one’s said they were sickly, as in - possibly died and were scavenged from the air; no one’s found trace of land based predators; very young foals would be incredibly demanding for thieves.
White tail eagles are huge. Perhaps the poor little beggars all had heart failure?
 
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