A white-tailed eagle that was released on the Isle of Wight waved bon voyage to Blighty when she flew across the Channel to France, covering a whopping 1,200 miles in just 22 days. The female, known as G818, took a quick trip over to Northern France at the tail end of March having left her regular hunting ground of Dorset. She flew to Brading Marshes here on the Island, before then soaring along the South Coast and across the Channel to the continent. During her visit to France, the white-tailed eagle – also known as a sea eagle – took in sights such as Rouen in Normandy, The Seine, Dieppe and Château de Cany. G818 was released near Bouldnor here on the Island in 2021, as part of the ongoing white-tailed eagle project run by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England. She has been satellite tracked ever since. Arriving back in England on 8th April, G818 spent some time around the Isle of Sheppey and South London before heading through the South Downs and into the New Forest – arriving back in the Avon Valley on 12th April. Her round flight covered a total of 1,281 miles across 22 days. 
TOUR DE FRANCE! WHITE-TAILED EAGLE COVERS 1,200 MILES IN FOREIGN ADVENTURE
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That’s an amasing route she’s taken.
How did she automatically know the shortest route across the channel? Awesome intelligence.
That’s easy… something looks smaller, the further away it is. So fly up UK coast until France looks bigger.
Probably due to the great height at which they often fly.
That’s a possibility, but I’m still not convinced.
Theres only one eay to go across the sea
Ah, apparently they use the earth’s magnetism and the sun’s trajectory not sight or smell. Just shows the difference in intelligences between species. Awesome!!
A magnetic sense is not “intelligence”. Birds can use multiple senses for navigation, but mainly visual and olfactory senses, and memory and magnetism for homing. Given that this bird has been tracked since release, it is known that she had never crossed the channel before; therefore, the bird was not using magnetism because there was no known target to navigate towards using magnetoreception. The bird was simply using available cues, principally visual information.
The eagle followed the coast until it could SEE the narrow crossing to France. Eagles can reach considerable heights on thermals and they have extraordinary vision.
What a beauty she is!