A WHITE-tailed eagle that was released into the South Coast skies in August has died.

It comes after six young birds were reintroduced to Southern England in August after 240 years, as part of a five-year programme run by Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation.

The birds were collected from the wild in Scotland and brought to care in England.

Since their release, the birds have been provided with feeding sites to “encourage them to settle along the South Coast” while their progress is closely monitored by a team running the programme through satellite trackers.

But Forestry England have said that it is "inevitable" that one bird has died.

A spokesperson for Forestry England said: "The first few months after leaving the nest are a challenging time for all young birds and we know that not all of the young eagles will survive. Unfortunately, we recently found out that one of our young eagles that had remained on the Isle of Wight after release had died.

"It had been eating a dead porpoise on the shore for several weeks and we knew where he was roosting. When we noticed that he had moved to a new place and had not been moving around very much, we immediately went out to investigate. Very sadly we found the bird had died. An initial post-mortem has been conducted and although no cause of death could be determined, further tests are underway that may provide some clarity as to exactly what happened.

They added: "Whilst this is clearly very sad, we know from previous projects involving white-tailed eagles and other raptors, that losses like this are unfortunately inevitable."

The five other birds are continuing to finding food and new places to perch, and while most of them remained on the Isle of Wight and surrounding Solent coastline, two of them have flown further away.