Finders in the Field: Booted Eagle, Nanquidno, Cornwall
For the last 12 years my long-suffering wife Liz and I have migrated down to Cornwall for 3-4 weeks in September/October. This year the birding hadn’t been great other than the new norm of large shearwaters in abundance. The best bird I’d seen in nearly 3 weeks was the Rosy Starling on the Lizard.
The morning of the 10th October was a mixture of sunshine and showers and as I had some work to do we didn’t head out until around midday, taking lunch up to Carn Gloose. After another heavy shower we started a walk we’d done on previous trips which takes in the lower end of the Cot Valley then round the coast path to Nanquidno, across the fields and back into the top end of Cot Valley and on to Carn Gloose. There had been nothing of interest in the Cot Valley tit flock and expectations weren’t high as we headed round to Nanquidno.
After checking the garden of the last house, I looked seaward around 3.45pm and noticed a decent-sized raptor drifting north. With the naked eye it looked very pale and I was half-expecting it to be an Osprey; to say I was shocked when I set eyes on the bird with bins is an understatement! It was immediately obvious as being a pale morph Booted Eagle, a species I’d seen several times in north Spain, on the much-missed Pride of Bilbao Biscay trips, albeit not for many years.
The bird was being chased mercilessly by corvids, mainly Jackdaws, and circled around several times before heading back southwards. It seemed to take for ever for the camera to lock onto the bird, but it did eventually, allowing a good number of photos to be taken. After just a couple of minutes the bird was lost from view.
The bird was clearly an eagle but a small one. A long straight-edged mainly dark tail was very evident from below; only when looking at photos could the paler parts of the outer feathers be seen when spread. Upper breast looked “dirty” but with a clean-cut division from a white belly. Head noticeably darker than upper breast and powerful.
Only brief views of the upperside were obtained a couple of times when circling and an odd pattern was noted. Two broad pale bands on upper body could be seen, looking like braces. The upper tail was a pale brown/dark cream colour, and much paler than the rest of the upper tail. There was a very obvious paler band starting from the forewing and reaching almost to the hindwing and formed mainly by the median but also very inner greater coverts. At some angles there appeared to be almost a complete band formed by the coverts and including the upper tail, which shows in some photos but is clearly not the actual situation.
Six very clear primaries evident for much of the time when the wings were spread. Primaries and secondaries very dark (almost black) from below, brown from above. The coverts were white from below.
The head was pale golden colour when viewed from side-on and above and with a noticeable darker smudged eye patch. Overall impression was of a pale Honey-Buzzard on steroids!
Much of the time the bird was in view was spent avoiding corvid attacks, so there were none of the typical long glides and rapid wing beats, but when gliding the wings were flat.
I met a couple of birders further up the valley soon afterwards but neither has seen the bird and we scanned around for a while but saw nothing further.
As the sighting was late in the afternoon, it seemed unlikely that the bird would risk a sea crossing the same day and so it proved, with other observers catching up with it the next day.
As a keen raptor watcher, I probably spend a bit more time than many birders looking skywards, and just occasionally something good appears. However, the shock of this will take a while to subside.
Mike Scott-Ham
Oct 2024
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