Predator or prey? The confounding case of the missing sea eagle

The six police officers arrived at the Snilesworth estate in two pickup trucks last week, according to one account. They asked to go up on the moors, a source said, and “so off they went”. A vast expanse of spectacularly undulating lands on the western edge of the North York Moors, Snilesworth is globally renowned for its grouse, partridge and pheasant shooting. It is known locally for attracting “rich people from London in helicopters and blacked-out SUVs”. This time, though, it was another rarified flying visitor that had drawn the police’s interest: the North York Moors are at the centre of a mystery surrounding a missing bird of prey. The officers, representing the national wildlife crime unit and North Yorkshire police, were seeking clues to the whereabouts of a white-tailed eagle, also known as a sea eagle, and more colloquially called the ‘flying barn door’, due to a 2.5-metre wingspan that makes them the UK’s largest raptor. Little appears to have been found in the copse that is said to have been the focus of the officers’ attentions. But enough apparently worried them about the circumstances surrounding the bird’s disappearance for North Yorkshire police to issue a call for information from the public on Monday. “The eagle’s disappearance is being treated as suspicious,” their press release said, “and an investigation is underway”. This was a more significant matter than your average avian disappearance. …