Alaska Fish & Wild fauna News
January 2008

Hawkeye Flight and Other Myths
Eagles Don't Consume Children or Pets

By Riley Woodford

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An eagle swoops down to take hold of a fish. Eagles weigh 8 to 12 pounds and tin can behave nearly three or four pounds. ADF&G photo.

Every few years a story makes the rounds virtually a baldheaded eagle carrying off a dog or trying to snatch someone's true cat. Biologists who study birds of prey and folks who live around eagles have seen plenty snatching and carrying – every bit well as swooping and pond – and they offered insights into what eagles actually can and cannot exercise.

Baldheaded eagles are strong, aggressive birds just like everything that flies they are governed by aerodynamics. The wings of an eagle need to support the eight to 12-pound bird also as whatever the bird is conveying, and best estimates put the lifting power of an eagle at four or v pounds. Only it's not quite that simple.

Lift is dependent not only on wing size, but on airspeed. The faster a bird (or plane) is flying, the greater the lift potential. An eagle that lands on the beach to take hold of a fish, and then takes off again, is limited to a smaller load than an eagle that swoops down at xx or 30 miles an hour and snatches upwardly a fish. That momentum and speed gives the bird the ability to behave more than weight.

Biologist Ron Clarke earned his masters degree studying birds of prey, and he'southward a falconer who trains raptors. He hunts with a gyrfalcon and a peregrine falcon, and said his 45-ounce gyr tin carry an 8-ounce bufflehead duck pretty easily. "He can't do the same with a mallard, though," he said. At about ii pounds, a mallard is iv times the weight of a bufflehead.

Clarke said an hawkeye with momentum is a different story.

"On a broad-open beach, I have no incertitude that an hawkeye with a full head of steam could pick up a vi- or viii-pound dog and just keep on going," Clarke said. "If information technology landed to kill a ten-pounder, and then tried to option upward and fly from a dead terminate, could it get off the basis? Probably not."

Eagles will carry heavier loads a short distance. Mike Jacobson spent decades as an hawkeye management specialist for the U.South. Fish and Wild fauna Service and recently retired.

"There used to exist stories about eagles carrying off babies and trivial kids, and none of that has ever been documented," he said. "They can pick up and carry 4 or 5 pounds, maximum, and actually fly off with information technology. They can elevator a lilliputian more and hop it along, but they can't carry it off."

Flying may be an eagle's birthright, but it requires skill. Falconers and birdwatchers tin attest that swooping down to nab dinner, or snatching food off the water, requires techniques that are honed with feel. Immature predators develop their hunting skills past trial and error, play, and testing limits. Immature eagles volition dive on floating bottles, attempt to lift salmon that are also heavy, and investigate new objects.

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"There used to be stories near eagles carrying off babies and little kids, and none of that has ever been documented," said Mike Jacobson, an eagle expert.

Jacobson said an young eagle is most likely to swoop down on something inappropriate, similar a big dog on the beach. People then overreact and claim that eagles are hunting dogs. "It gets exaggerated" he said. "Eagles don't chase cats and pocket-sized dogs."

The vast majority of eagles' nutrition in Southeast is fish. Jacobson said in other areas the diet varies more, as eagles take reward of local opportunities. Eagles that live near seabird colonies will consume more birds, and eagles in the Interior take more birds and small mammals than eagles in Southeast. Jacobson one time saw an eagle carrying a mink and he'due south heard stories of eagles carrying pocket-size muskrats. Eagles in the Aleutians are known to prey on sea otter pups during pupping season. But fish is the baldheaded eagles' bread and butter.

Other eagles are a dissimilar. Jacobson said golden eagles are very comparable in size and weight to bald eagles, but they target different casualty. "Golden eagles are not bigger or stronger, but they accept very different behavior," he said.

Although bald eagles don't actively target cats, Jacobson has heard a few stories that seemed plausible. A minor cat is certainly within an hawkeye's abilities. "Eagles take occasionally nailed people's cats," he said. "Information technology's rare, merely people practice see them swoop down on cats sometimes."

David Hunsaker once found a cat collar in an eagle nest. The nest is right exterior the window of his Tee Harbor home, and he's done a great bargain of hawkeye watching over the past dozen years. He and his wife watched a pair of eagles build the nest, and they've seen eagles incubate eggs, deliver nutrient and raise a number of broods of chicks. They've watched the chicks abound and fledge.

"The cat neckband was funny," he said. "It had a bong attached to warn birds. It was still buckled."

Hunsaker added that the collar doesn't necessarily prove the eagles carried a true cat to the nest. Also in the nest was a child'southward rattle toy. "I envision that rattle clutched in a chubby fist, but it's not probable the eagles defenseless a child."

It'south also possible the true cat was a scavenged roadkill. He's seen fur in the nest a few times, and a few bloody birds, but said the eagles are nigh exclusively fish eaters.

"The majority are herring or smelt, minor fish about eight inches long," he said. He'south seen enough of salmon delivered to the nest, normally in pieces. "They'll bring half a salmon, usually a pinkish, then take off and come back with what appears to exist the other half. So they dismember it somewhere. I've never seen them bring a full coho or sockeye, only pieces."

Hunsaker doubts the accounts of eagles taking small dogs non because they couldn't carry it, but considering in his observations, eagles are very wary of people. Although the nest is near the house, the birds don't roost on the peak of the firm, the deck or nearby ability poles. "They are actually skittish around people," he said. "They are not going to snatch a dog off a leash, or right in front end of the owner."

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Herring and other small fish are the staff of life and butter for bald eagels in coastal Alaska. ADF&G photograph.

Biologist Phil Schempf works for the U. S. Fish and Wild animals Service in raptor and migratory bird direction. He has no doubt an hawkeye could kill a small canis familiaris or true cat if the opportunity presented itself, and behave it or at least pieces of it to a nest. "My feeling is that information technology doesn't happen very oftentimes though," he wrote in an email. "I'd speculate that is due to eagles existence leery of budgeted people or foraging in novel areas such equally people'south yards. Eagles typically are foraging along beaches or riparian areas where it is rare for dogs and cats to be unattended by their owners."

An eagle is sometimes spotted in the h2o, talons latched on a heavy salmon, laboriously rowing to shore with its wings. Information technology's a impuissant swimming fashion, but it works. It's said that the eagle tin can't let become, that the talons somehow lock on to the fish. That'southward non true. At that place is no involuntary locking mechanism, and the hawkeye could allow go if information technology wished. The hungry bird has simply decided the repast is worth the swim.

Jacobson said that over the years there take been a number of observations of eagles grabbing fish and getting pulled underwater. He said it'due south not because they can't release their talons, "They can let go," he said.

"It's common for them to get a hold of a fish that's also heavy to fly with…they tin't take off just they can tow it to shore, rowing with their wings. They're pretty good swimmers. They take thick down and so they bladder pretty well. Occasionally they'll drown if they're also far from shore."

State wildlife biologist Rich Lowell of Petersburg said it's not unusual for eagles to end up in the water. His function next door to a fish processing establish overlooks the water and he's seen an eagle intentionally land on the water to pick upwardly fish scraps discarded by the workers. He said opposite to popular conventionalities, an eagle can accept off from the surface of the h2o as long as it does not sit there too long and get its wings wet. He added that while eagles can certainly lock on with their talons, it is a purely voluntary action and they tin release at will.


Riley Woodford is a writer for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He is the editor of Alaska Fish and Wild fauna News and produces the Sounds Wild radio programme.

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