A sea eagle known as "Kinky" has been spotted alive and flying above the Isle of Mull, three years after surviving a broken wing sustained as a chick when it fell from its nest during a storm in 2023. The RSPB dubbed it the island's "miracle eagle" after experts monitoring Mull's sea eagle population initially expected the injury to be fatal, but the bird was nursed back to health by unusually devoted parents and has now proven it can survive independently, including through its first winter alone.

The male eagle earned its nickname from a visible kink where its wing bone healed after the fall. Its parents, a pair of white-tailed eagles, delayed a breeding season to continue caring for it into adulthood, an extended parenting effort retired RSPB officer Dave Sexton called "incredible" after more than 20 years studying the island's eagles. Kinky was most recently photographed flying over Loch Spelve on Mull's south-east coast; Sexton warned the bird now faces a riskier "sub-adult" phase, as established adult pairs may act aggressively towards it. White-tailed eagles were hunted to extinction in the UK, with the last native bird shot in Shetland in 1918, before a 1975 reintroduction programme re-established a self-sustaining population that returned to Mull in the 1980s.