A few days ago, Dave Sexton raised his trusted binoculars towards wide-open skies where Scotland’s most majestic birds soar to watch Mull’s newest white-tailed eagle take its first tentative flight. As he tracked its brief but beautiful ascent into the blue yonder, it was with the same delight that had enveloped him 44 years earlier when, as a young man on a birding holiday, his heart was captured by the sight of an adult white-tailed eagle in full flight. That fleeting encounter sparked a lifetime journey that led from his upbringing in south London to become the man credited with putting ‘Eagle Island’ on the map.
(Image: Amanda Fergusson Photography) As bird charity RSPB Scotland’s Mull officer he has spent more than two decades keeping watch on the spectacular birds, following courtships to nest building, to incubating eggs and the joyful moment as the young take flight. From a handful of birds to Mull's current 23 pairs, spanning the threat of egg thieves to avian flu, under Dave’s ‘eagle eye’ a species once hunted to extinction has thrived. Now, having witnessed this season’s last chicks take flight, he is calling time.
But it's not that he has lost interest in Mull’s white-tailed eagles; his passion for them has not waivered. Instead, it’s the thought of carrying on now that his beloved brown-eyed black labrador, Cally, is no longer by his side that makes going about his island routine that bit harder. Cally, his constant companion for more than a.