the older history of the white-tailed eagle in britain · the older history of the white-tailed...

471© British Birds 100 • August 2007 • 471–480

ABSTRACT This short article reviews evidence for the former status of White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla in Britain, on the basis of place-names

and archaeological findings. It concludes that there is no doubt that White-tailed Eagles frequented lowland southern Britain during Roman

and Anglo-Saxon times.

The older history of the White-tailed Eagle

in BritainDerek W. Yalden

Richard Johnson www.stitchbird.co.uk

The ornithological literature on theformer status of the White-tailed EagleHaliaeetus albicilla in Britain has been

admirably summarised by Love (1983), as partof the background to the reintroduction pro-gramme for the species in Scotland. The bird’salternative name (the Sea Eagle), as well as itsrecent (c. 1700–1900) history here, has tendedto reinforce the notion that it is a maritimespecies, associated especially with sea cliffs andislands. This has led some to question the sug-gestion, currently under consideration, that itshould also be reintroduced to England, andmoreover not to an especially maritime county,such as Cornwall, but to Suffolk. Such ques-tioning ignores both its history as a Britishspecies and its ecology in, for instance,Germany and Poland, where it frequents large

river valleys, lakes and reservoirs in woodedareas, nesting sometimes on river cliffs butoften in large trees.

Its ecology elsewhere is well covered inCramp & Simmons (1980) and by local sources.I wish to concentrate here on other evidence ofits former status in Britain, especially England,which comes from archaeological and place-name evidence. This evidence makes clear justhow widespread it once was in lowland Britain.

Place-namesThe Old English (OE, otherwise Anglo-Saxon)name ‘earn’, which became ‘erne’, probablyapplied to any large eagle. While the White-tailed Eagle was certainly recognised as a scav-enger, along with the Wolf Canis lupus andCommon Raven Corvus corax, of the battlefield

472 British Birds 100 • August 2007 • 471–480

The older history of the White-tailed Eagle in Britain

Table 1. Places named after White-tailed Eagles Haliaeetus albicilla in England. Note that it seems likely that the Old English (OE) ‘earn’ referred to eagles in general, and that it did not always differentiate Golden EagleAquila chrysaetos from White-tailed Eagle.The distribution of these names, and their frequent association with

woodland and river valleys, strongly hints at White-tailed rather than Golden Eagle. A few Middle English (ME),Old Norse (ON) and Cornish (C) names are included. County names are the pre-1974 ones traditionally used

in place-name literature. Compiled from Gelling (1987), Whittaker (1998) and Gelling & Cole (2000).

Place County Grid Ref. Old English Meaning

Arbury Banks Hertfordshire TL2638 OE earn, byrig eagle fort banksAreley Worcestershire SO8070 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArlecdon Cumbria NY0419 OE earn, lacu, denu eagle-stream valleyArley Warwickshire SP2890 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArley Worcestershire SO7680 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArley Cheshire SJ6780 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArley Lancashire SD5327 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArley Lancashire SD6707 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArley Staffordshire SO7680 OE earn, leah eagle clearingArnberg Scar West Yorkshire SD9769 OE earna-beorg, sker eagles’ hill scarArncliffe North Yorkshire SD9371 OE earn, clif eagle cliffArnecliff North Yorkshire NZ7804 OE earn, clif eagle cliffArnecliffe North Yorkshire SD9356 OE earn, clif eagle cliffArnewas Huntingdon TL0997 OE earn, waesse eagle wetlandsArnewood Hampshire SZ2895 OE earn, wudu eagle woodArngrove Buckinghamshire SP6013 OE earna, graf eagles’ groveArnold Nottinghamshire SK5945 OE earn, halh eagle nookArnold East Yorkshire TA1241 OE earn, halh eagle nookAyleford Gloucestershire SO6608 OE earnleah, ford eagle-clearing fordBurniere Cornwall SW9873 C bren, er eagle hillEagle Crag Cumbria NY2712 ME eagle cragEarley Berkshire SU7571 OE earn, leah eagle clearingEarlye farm? Sussex TQ5932 OE earn, leah? eagle clearing farmEarn Crag Westmorland NY3608 ME earn, cragge eagle cragEarnley Sussex SZ8196 OE earn, leah eagle clearingEarnshaw West Yorkshire SK2297 OE earna, sceaga eagles’ woodEarnshaw Cheshire SJ7270 OE earna, sceaga eagles’ woodEarnshaw Bridge Lancashire SD5222 OE earna, sceaga eagles’ wood bridgeEarnslow Cheshire SJ6270 OE earnes, leah eagle’s clearingEarnstrey Shropshire SO5788 OE earnes, treow eagle’s treeEarnwood Shropshire SO7478 OE earn, wudu eagle woodEasdon Devon SX7382 OE earnes, dun eagle’s hillEglemont Bedfordshire SP9821 ME eagle hillEridge Sussex TQ5535 OE earn, hrycg eagle ridgeErne Crag Westmorland NY3608 ME erne, cragge eagle cragErnesborough Devon SS6230 OE earnes, beorgh eagle’s moundErnesdon Wood Buckinghamshire SP8745 OE earna, denu eagles’ valley woodGreat Early Grove Bedfordshire TL0953 OE earna, leah eagles’ clearingHern Clough Derbyshire SK0994 OE earn ON clough eagle valleyHerneshaw Cumbria NY7270 OE earna, sceaga eagles’ woodHernside Derbyshire SK1692 OE earn, side eagle slopeHern Stones Derbyshire SK0995 OE earn, stan eagle stonesIngleby Arncliffe North Yorkshire NZ4400 OE earn, clif eagle cliffLittle Ernesettle Devon SX4559 OE earnes, setl eagle’s seatYarnacombe Cross Devon SX7243 OE earn, cumb eagle valley crossYarnacombe Devon SX6952 OE earn, cumb eagle valleyYarnbury Castle Wiltshire SU0340 OE earn, burh eagle fort castleYarncliffe West Yorkshire SK3184? OE earn, clif eagle cliffYarneford Devon SX8366 OE earn, ford eagle fordYarnfield Wiltshire ST7637 OE earna, feld eagles’ fieldYarninknowle Wood Devon SX6150 OE earna, cnoll eagle knoll wood

dead (‘earn aeftan hwit’, the eagle white behind;Kitson 1997, 1998), it cannot be certain thatevery incorporation of ‘earn’ in a place-namerelates to this species. However, there is anabundance of such place-names, and they arewidely scattered across lowland Britain. Theecological distinction between Golden EaglesAquila chrysaetos frequenting upland areas andWhite-tailed Eagles frequenting lowlands, aswell as coastal areas, is widespread acrossEurope, while in North America, Bald Eagles H.leucocephalus play the equivalent lowland role.Both White-tailed and Golden Eagles feed on

carrion, the former does so more regularly, butthe more important dietary distinction is thatGolden Eagles hunt mammals and birds, whileWhite-tailed Eagles, like other Haliaeetus, feedextensively on fish, both freshwater and marine.Thus Golden Eagles are more likely to be foundin mountainous areas, with abundant haresLepus, marmots Marmota and grouse(Tetraonidae), while White-tailed Eagles areusually found near water. Gelling (1987),reviewing a sample of 34 place-names involving‘earn’, noted two categories of associated wordsmaking up the place-names, one indicating

open country and the otherwoodland. She suggested thatperhaps places in open country,incorporating elements like field,ridge, combe, cliff and bank,referred to Golden Eagles; severallocations in Devon and Yorkshireare of this type. Places along, forinstance, the Severn, Mersey andThames valleys that includedwood or ‘leah’, a clearing inwoodland (e.g. Arley, Earnley),were more likely to relate toWhite-tailed Eagles. Furthersearching in the volumes of theEnglish Place-name Society (seeBoisseau & Yalden 1999 for a fullbibliography of these sources), inpart as a student project by JamesWhittaker, has increased thesample of relevant place-namesto 68. About a third (21) of theplace-names imply woodland orwoodland clearings (table 1).While it is not possible to insistthat any specific name relates tothe former presence of White-tailed rather than Golden Eaglesat these places, the spread of

473British Birds 100 • August 2007 • 471–480


Table 1. Places named after White-tailed Eagles Haliaeetus albicilla in England (continued).

Yarnscombe Devon SS5523 OE earn, cumb eagle valleyYarnshaw Hill Cheshire SJ9870 OE earna, sceaga eagles’ wood hillYarns Hill? West Yorkshire SD9905 OE earn, hyll? eagle hillYarner Devon SX7778 OE earn, ofer eagle ridgeYarner Devon SX7762 OE earn, ora eagle ridgeYarnfield Staffordshire SJ8632 OE earn, feld eagle fieldYarnold Farm Worcestershire SO9473 OE earn, hyll eagle hill farmYarnspath Law Co. Durham NT8813 OE earnes, paeth eagles’ pathYarwoodheath Cheshire SJ7485 OE earn, wudu eagle wood heathYes Tor Devon SX5890 OE earna, tor eagles’ tor

Fig. 1. Map of place-names including the element ‘earn’ (red circles,data in table 1). A few ‘eagle’ names (yellow circles) and one

Cornish ‘er’ (yellow diamond) are also shown.

names across lowland England surely relates toWhite-tailed Eagles. Gelling’s argument thattwo species are indicated by the names isdoubted by Kitson (1998), who consideredthem to refer mostly or entirely to White-tailedEagles. A cursory examination of the names inDevon, for example, finds most of them inwooded valleys and around, rather than on, thehighest ground, and therefore less likely to beGolden Eagle sites. Later (Middle English)names and those in northern England related tocliffs and crags might more plausibly be relatedto Golden Eagles, but even that is not certain.Both Golden and White-tailed Eagles wererecorded in historical times from the Lake Dis-trict (Love 1983).

Place-names in northern and western areasof Britain, incorporating elements such as ScotsGaelic ‘iolaire’, Welsh ‘eryr’, Manx ‘urley’ andIrish ‘iolar’, as well as the Old Norse ‘orn’, havealso been compiled, but could relate to eitherspecies, and are left out of table 1 and fig. 1.

Given that modern tourists to Scotland arereputed to misidentify CommonBuzzards Buteo buteo as eagles ona regular basis, one might askhow reliable is the attribution ofearn in place-names to what inmodern terms we regard aseagles? Two arguments presentthemselves. One is that a muchmore rural population had amuch better idea of what theysaw in the countryside thanmodern town-dwelling tourists,even if their concepts of aviantaxonomy were less precise thannow. The other is the wide varietyof other raptors whose namesappear in place-names. A trawl ofplace-name literature similar tothat which located the earn place-names found 170 involving hawkand 18 ‘hafoc’ (Anglo-Saxon forhawk), 96 for kite or ‘cyta’ (origi-nally indicating buzzard), 24‘puttock’ (also kite, originally),five ‘pyttel’ (buzzard) and 54‘gleoda’ (glider, either kite orharrier) (Boisseau 1995). Theseare identified with their Latinequivalents in Anglo-Saxon glos-saries (e.g. hafoc = accipiter, cyta= buteo and gleoda = milvus, in

Aelfric’s glossary; Wright 1884). Place-namesincorporate one or two other bird names whosemodern identity is less certain, notably ‘wrocc’in Wroxall, Wraxall, etc. (12 place-names),which Ekwall (1936) suggested to be also a namefor a raptor, perhaps a buzzard. In view of itsscarcity as a place-name, its southern distribu-tion, and absence from the glossaries, a rarerraptor, perhaps Honey-buzzard Pernis apivorus(my own preference) or Marsh Harrier Circusaeruginosus (suggested by Kitson 1998), is indi-cated. Either way, it is clear that the Anglo-Saxons had and used a variety of names forsmaller raptors, and it is surely inconceivablethat they misused ‘earn’ to refer to them.

Archaeological recordsArchaeological records are usually unam-biguous to species. Not only are White-tailedEagle bones generally bigger than those ofGolden Eagles, even after allowing for the con-siderable sexual dimorphism in size betweenfemales and smaller males, but the two species



Fig. 2. Map of archaeological records of White-tailed Eagles Haliaeetusalbicilla (data in table 2).

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are not closely related and there are numerousskeletal differences. For instance, two of thedigital phalanges (toe bones) in the 4th toe arefused in Haliaeetus, but not in Aquila, and ofcourse the beak is much deeper. The archaeo-logical record has been collated under a projectfinanced by the Leverhulme Trust, as a prelim-inary step to writing a forthcoming book on thehistory of British birds. Currently, it includes 57records (table 2, fig. 2). The same database hasonly 15 records of Golden Eagle, and nine ofuncertain ‘eagle sp.’ (table 3, fig. 3). In time, theyrange from Ipswichian Interglacial to lateMedieval, but only five pre-date the Late Glacialperiod (15,000–11,000 years BP). Records laterthan the maximum of the Last (Devensian)Glaciation, at about 20,000 years BP, can betaken as indicating native status; that is, the birdarrived by itself, after the maximum of the LastGlaciation wiped the biological slate clean (seeYalden 2003). Most records (19) come fromRoman sites. This does not necessarily meanthat the species was most abundant then; rather,

it indicates the wealth of Roman archaeologicalsites that has been excavated in this country.However, they do show clearly that it was wide-spread throughout England during that period.There are fewer records from later, post-Roman,periods, and they are mostly from northernsites. This may be a genuine reflection ofincreasing scarcity due to persecution, drainageand woodland clearance.

Some of these records come from the sort ofmaritime, northern sites that match the modernperception of good White-tailed Eagle habitat,notably sites such as Viking Age Skail in Orkneyand Medieval Iona in the Inner Hebrides, aswell as the Neolithic and Iron Age Orkney sitesof Isbister, Howe, Links of Notland and Point ofCott. White-tailed Eagles were remarkablyabundant at Isbister, contributing 641 of a totalof 745 bird bones, and must have had somesymbolic significance there – the site receivedthe nickname ‘Tomb of the Eagles’ (Bramwell1983; Hedges 1984). However, the spread ofrecords across lowland Britain is equally

notable, and registers the speciesfrom the Somerset Levels (IronAge lake villages at Meare andGlastonbury) and the wetlandsof the Humber estuary (Skipsea,Hornsea, Dragonby) as well asthe fenlands of East Anglia(Burwell Fen, Stonea, Long-thorpe).

Not only is the Golden Eaglemuch rarer in archaeologicalsites, but the 14 available recordscome from northern and westernBritain (table 3); as befits thearguments, above, about thehabitat of the two species, noneis further southeast in Englandthan Stafford and the Peak Dis-trict (fig. 3). One might expectmore records from Scotland, butthe archaeological record there ispoorer than from England, andthe best sites there (the ones withmost wild birds recorded) arecoastal ones, particularly inOrkney. There is a similar,though less extreme, disparity inthe Swedish archaeologicalrecord: 18 Golden Eagles but 33White-tailed Eagles (Ericson &Tyrberg 2004).



Fig. 3. Map of archaeological sites for Golden Eagles Aquila chrysaetosand uncertainly identified eagles (data in table 3).

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Table 2. Archaeological records of White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla in Britain.Dates/periods are as assigned to these records in the source literature.

Site Grid ref. Date/period Source

Walton, nr Clevedon ST4274 Ipswichian? Reynolds (1907); Palmer & Hinton (1928)Tornewton Cave SX8167 Wolstonian Harrison (1980a,b); Harrison (1987)Soldier’s Hole, Cheddar ST4654 Middle/Early Harrison (1988)

Late DevensianCat Hole, Gower SS5390 Devensian Harrison (1980a)London Basin TQ27 Upper Devensian Harrison (1985)Walthamstow, Essex TQ3788 Late Glacial Bell (1922); Harrison & Walker (1977)Soldier’s Hole, Cheddar ST4654 Late Glacial Harrison (1988)Rousay, Orkney HY4030 Post-Glacial Bramwell (1960)Church Hole Cave SK5374 Flandrian Jenkinson (1984)Hornsea TA2147 Holocene Bell (1922)Skipsea TA1655 Mesolithic Sheppard (1922)Port Eynon Cave, Gower SS4785 9,000–6,000 BP Harrison (1987)Carding Mill Bay NM8429 5,000 BP Hamilton-Dyer & McCormick (1993)Lough Gur, Co Limerick R6441 Neolithic D’Arcy (1999)Links of Noltland, Orkney HY4249 Neolithic Armour-Chelu (1988)Rousay – Knowe of Ramsay HY4028 Neolithic Davidson & Henshall (1989)Isbister HY4018 Neolithic Bramwell (1983)Westray – Point of Cott HY4647 Neolithic Harman (1997)Dublin – Dalkey Island O2726 Neolithic Hatting (1968)Burwell Fen TL5967 Bronze Age Northcote (1980)Potterne ST9959 Bronze Age Locker (2000)Coneybury Henge, nr Stonehenge SU1341 Bronze Age Maltby (1990)Dragonby SE9012 Iron Age Harman (1996)Meare Lake Village ST4442 Iron Age Gray (1966)Glastonbury Lake Village ST4938 Iron Age Andrews (1917); Harrison (1980a, 1987)Deerness – Skail HY5806 Iron Age Allison (1997)Howe, Orkney HY2710 Iron Age Bramwell (1994)Puckeridge & Braughing TL3924 Late Iron Age Ashdown (1979)Carlisle – The Lanes NY3956 Early Roman Connell & Davis (unpubl.)Leicester – High Street SK5804 Roman Baxter (1993); Mulkeen & O’Connor (1997)Stanwick – Redlands Farm SP9670 Roman Davis (1997)Uley Shrines, Gloucs. ST7899 Roman Cowles (1993)Ower SZ0085 Roman Coy (1987)Stonea, Cambridgeshire TL4493 Roman Stallibrass (1996)London – Billingsgate Buildings TQ3280 Roman Cowles (1980a); Parker (1988)London – Southwark TQ3179 Roman Cowles (1980b); Parker (1988)Caerleon ST3390 Roman Hamilton-Dyer (1993)Camulodunum TL9825 Roman Luff (1982, 1985); Parker (1988)Long Bennington SK8247 Roman Harman (1994)Dragonby SE9012 Roman Harman (1996)Tolpuddle Ball SY8194 Roman Hamilton-Dyer (1999)Longthorpe TL1597 Roman King (1987)Binchester NZ2131 Roman Mulkeen & O’Connor (1997)Segontium SH4864 Roman O’Connor (1993); Mulkeen & O’Connor

(1997)Dunstable TL0121 Roman Jones & Horne (1981); Parker (1988)Droitwich SO8963 Roman Cowles (1980b); Parker (1988)Scole-Dickleburgh TM1680 Late Roman Baker (1998)York – Minster – SE SE6052 5th–8th C Rackham (1995)Lagore N9852 Sax/Med Stelfox (1938), Hencken (1950)York – Coppergate SE6052 Anglo–Scand O’Connor (1989)Deerness – Skail HY5806 Viking Allison (1997)York – Minster – Contubernia SE6052 9th–11th C Rackham (1995)Dublin – Woods Quay O1535 10th–11th C D’Arcy (1999)Nantwich SJ6552 Medieval Fisher (1986)Waterford S6012 Medieval D’Arcy (1999)Iona – Abbey NM2824 Medieval Coy & Hamilton-Dyer (1993)Brougham Castle, Cumbria NY5328 14th–16th C Gidney (1992)

ConclusionsFor a large and generally scarce bird, White-tailed Eagle is relatively frequent in the archaeo-logical record, and there is no doubt about theidentity of most of its remains. The ninerecords of ‘eagle sp.’ appended to table 3 are aslikely, on distributional or habitat arguments, tobe Golden Eagle as White-tailed Eagle, exceptfor the record from Caister-on-Sea. Place-names are more ambiguous – they could referto either White-tailed or Golden Eagle – butthey supplement the record of bones inshowing that eagles were once widespread insouthern and lowland Britain, not confined tomontane areas. The two sets of data are comple-mentary. By definition, in most archaeologicalsites, eagle bones have been transported byhumans, so might derive from some distanceaway. Place-names might refer to the other

species, but they surely relate to the particularsite in question. In combination, there is nodoubt that White-tailed Eagles frequentedlowland, southern Britain through Roman andAnglo-Saxon times. Historically, there is noreason to question the propriety of attemptingto reintroduce the species to southern England.

Acknowledgments

The archaeological database on which this ar ticle iscompiled was assembled from the literature by RobertCarthy, employed on a Leverhulme Research Grant. I amgrateful to both him and the Leverhulme Trust for theirsupport, which is intended to result in the publication of aHistory of British Birds. Numerous correspondents havehelped with both place-name and archaeological literatureand records, including M. Gelling and P. R. Kitson on theformer, Umberto Albarella, Keith Dobney, Sheila Hamilton-Dyer, Terry O’Connor, Dale Serjeantson and CatherineSmith on the latter. I thank James Whittaker and SimonBoisseau for the contr ibutions made by theirundergraduate projects on place-names.



Table 3. Archaeological sites for Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos and uncertain eagle Aquila/Haliaeetus sp.,arranged roughly in date order. Dates/periods are as assigned to these records in the source literature.

Site Grid ref. Date/period Source

Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetosCat Hole, Gower, Glamorgan SS5390 Devensian Harrison (1980a)Aveline’s Hole, Somerset ST4758 Late Pleistocene Newton (1921, 1922, 1924); Tyrberg (1998)Pinhole Cave, Derbyshire SK5374 Late Devensian Jenkinson (1984)Robin Hood’s Cave, SK5374 Late Devensian Jenkinson & Bramwell (1984)DerbyshireGough’s Old Cave, Cheddar, ST4653 Late Palaeolithic Harrison (1989)SomersetFox Hole Cave, Derbyshire SK1066 Neolithic Bramwell (1978)Howe, Orkney HY2710 Iron Age Bramwell (1994)Meare Lake Village, Somerset ST4442 Iron Age Gray (1966)Bainesse Farm, Catterick, SE2299 Roman Meddens (1990); Stallibrass (2002)N. YorkshireOssom’s Eyrie Cave, SK0955 Roman Bramwell et al. (1987, 1990)StaffordshireIona Monastery, Argyll NM2824 Christian Coy & Hamilton-Dyer (1993)Lough Gur, Co. Limerick R6441 13th–14th C D’Arcy (1999)Iona, Argyll NM2825 Medieval Bramwell (1981)Stafford Castle, Staffordshire SJ9223 16th C G. Jones pers. comm.

Aquila/Haliaeetus sp.Langwith Cave, Derbyshire SK5169 Devensian Mullins (1913)Little Hoyle, Pembrokeshire SS1199 Late Pleistocene Bell (1915); Tyrberg (1998)

(22,800 BP)Mount Sandel, nr Coleraine, C8632 Mesolithic van Wijngaarden-Bakker (1985)Co. DownJarlshof, Shetland HU3909 Bronze Age Platt (1956)Perthichwareu, Llandegla, SJ1854 Neolithic Bramwell (1960)DenbighshireMidhowe, Rousay, Orkney HY3730 Neolithic Davidson & Henshall (1989)Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk TG5112 Roman Harman (1993)High Street, Perth, Perthshire NO1123 Medieval Smith (1997)Castle Park, Dunbar, E. Lothian NT6679 Medieval Smith (2000)

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Derek W. Yalden, High View, Tom Lane, Chapel-en-le-Frith, High Peak SK23 9UN

199. Adult White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla, Hokkaido, Japan, February 2007.

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