White-bellied Sea Eagle - Cultural Significance

Cultural Significance

The White-bellied Sea Eagle was important to different tribes of indigenous people across Australia. The guardian animal of the Wreck Bay aboriginal community, it is also the official emblem of the Booderee National Park and Botanic Gardens in the Jervis Bay Territory. The community considered localities around Booderee National Park to be connected with it. A local Sydney name was gulbi, and the bird was the totem of Colebee, the late 18th century indigenous leader of the Cadigal people. The White-bellied Sea Eagle is important to the Mak Mak people of the floodplains to the southwest of Darwin in the Northern Territory, who recognised its connection with "good country". It is their totem and integrally connected to their land. The term Mak Mak is their name for both the species and themselves. The Umbrawarra Gorge Nature Park was a Dreaming site of the bird, in this area known as Kuna-ngarrk-ngarrk. It was similarly symbolic to the Tasmanian indigenous people—Nairanaa was one name used there.

Known as Manulab to the people of Nissan Island, the White-bellied Sea Eagle is considered special and killing it is forbidden. Its calls at night are said to foretell danger, and seeing a group of calling eagles flying overhead is a sign that someone has died. Local Malay folk tales tell of the White-bellied Sea Eagle screaming to warn the shellfish of the turning of tides, and a local name burung hamba siput translates as "slave of the shellfish". Called Kaulo in the recently extinct Aka-Bo language, the White-bellied Sea Eagle was held to be the ancestor of all birds in one Andaman Islands folk tale. On the Maharashtra coast, their name is kakan and its call is said to indicate the presence of fish in the sea. They sometimes nest on coconut trees. Owners of the trees destroy the nest to avoid attacks when harvesting the coconuts.

The White-bellied Sea Eagle is featured on the $10,000 Singapore note, which was introduced into circulation on 1 February 1980. It is the emblem of the Malaysian state of Selangor. Malay magnate Loke Wan Tho had a 40 m (130 ft) high tower built for the sole purpose of observing a White-bellied Sea Eagle nest in the palace gardens of Istana Bukit Serene in Johor Bahru. Taken in February 1949, the resulting photographs appeared in The Illustrated London News in 1954. The bird is the emblem of the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles rugby league team, chosen at the club's inception in 1947. From 2010, a nesting pair of White-bellied Sea Eagles have had their attempts at raising chicks filmed live on "EagleCam", with footage on display at the nearby Birds Australia Discovery Centre in Sydney Olympic Park, New South Wales. After raising one brood, however, their nest collapsed in February 2011. The story attracted statewide attention. A new nest was constructed nearby, two eggs laid, and one chick raised to fledging in late 2011.