White-tailed Eagle - 1894

Haliaetus albicilla

A rare occasional winter visitor.

Although one of the highest points of the Precelly Mountains is known by the name of Foel-Eryr " the Eagle's Peak," we cannot ascertain that any species of Eagle has nested within recent years in Pembrokeshire, or has been observed as a frequent visitor to the county.

Sir Hugh Owen has informed us that in the winter of 1851 an Eagle was seen almost daily in the neighbourhood of Haverfordwest, more particularly frequenting the covers of Picton Castle and Slebech, and that it escaped being shot. This bird was supposed to have been a Golden Eagle, but with more probability may be considered to have been an immature White-tailed Eagle, a species not unseldom observed as a straggler along the western coasts of the kingdom.

Then, another Eagle, of whose occurrence we do not possess the date, that was seen on Skomer, and was thought to have been a Spotted Eagle, and was not obtained, was more likely a young White-tailed Eagle on passage. In Lord Cawdor's collection, at Stackpole Court, we have seen a young White-tailed Eagle that had been shot near Carmarthen, and with this bird we exhaust our meagre record of the Eagles seen or obtained in the south-west corner of the Principality.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands