Eagle Journal

Hello everyone,

As you can see, Widow’s weight is back up and actually it’s at the highest now that I have ever flown her — better for Widow, not so for my arm/shoulder!

There are many aspects about flying golden eagles that I love. One is watching them go through the sometimes painful, sometimes comical process of fine tuning their hunting skills. Widow seems to be taking her own unique approach, through which, if left to her own in the wild, she would surely starve. Female golden eagles are, without a doubt, the most powerful hunting raptor we have here in the US and the golden eagle ranks in the top 5 worldwide.

So, they are a formidable predator. And for all their power and strength female goldens will attach themselves to a male golden, following him around and taking food from him. This outlook on life shows up in different ways when one is hunting with a female. For example, as I am walking through the alfalfa hay field and a jack flushes more than 15 feet away she wants nothing to do with it. Now, part is still her condition and the feather issue, but it also the female attitude. She would rather wait for a jack that is closer, i.e. less work. So, with all that said, here’s her latest technique.  As I move through the sometimes knee high hay, jack rabbits will hear us coming and raise their ears. As we get closer they lower their ears, hunkering down in the "hides" they have scraped in the dirt. Widow spots them, launches off the fist, flies over the spot where she spotted the jack, and tries to casually land on top of the jack rabbit. Needless to say, the jacks aren’t hanging around, and leave, much to Widow’s surprise and disbelief . She also thinks that by flying 100 plus yards over to the large bank that the railroad track is on and trying to catch the jacks that are running up and over the tracks is a good idea.

One thing I know about eagles, male or female, when a jack rabbit explodes from under my feet they will react, and react with amazing quickness and power, including Widow! She has taken a jack the last 3 or 4 days so she is building some level of confidence and is making some serious pursuits, causing jacks to use their best escape moves in order to get away. One thing that demonstrates her inexperience was probably today’s best flight, well, at least the most explosive flight. I had been walking up and down the checks in the alfalfa field and getting a nice amount of jacks up with Widow making a good effort at hooking one. It is exciting because you never know when a jack will come out of nowhere and you cannot relax because timing is everything. It always goes like this…… I stop for a rest and take one more step and bang out comes a jack. Widow reacted quickly and was off the fist, but instead of flying to where the jack is going to be she goes to where it was. Then she has to power her way back into the air and gets beat! Widow went sliding sideways in the hay, stood up, and flew back to the fist. The moment she landed something caught her eye back over my shoulder and off she went, flying 30 yards and then landed. No sooner had she landed and I saw her strike something and it was a smallish jack rabbit! That’s two days in a row she has caught a jack this way. Not the most exciting flights, that’s for sure. Going to be a long boring summer if this is how she wants to hunt.

Hope all is well,

Joe