After eight more or less results solve days of field work is it hard with the motivation. To watch with a binoculars, hour after hour, requires a certain purposefulness.
Yes, I have seen some Golden Eagles, but they have either been too young to be sexually mature or old enough but still not inclined to play. Home range is over twenty square km large, so there is a danger that I always can be in the wrong position!
Yesterday however, I got rewarded! Sunshine, some plus degrees and strong breeze gave perfect eagle weather! (The large and relatively heavy birds need help of strong wind or thermals for reviving their play, a kind of Acro – flying)
On site at our oldest Golden eagle home range I barely get up the telescope before the two adult (sexually mature) eagles swept in over the mountain crest. Two dark coloured birds with impressive authority. We have follow them here since 2001, but they have bred in the area longer than that. Over the last 10 years they have come up with 8 fully fledged juveniles.
After a moment of circling at low altitude over pine forest go the eagles down, in top of a tree. They sit for a while in the sunlight and clean the plumage before one of them takes off again and take height. After rising several hundred meters, it suddenly, fold the wings and plunges downward, in a deep dive which shortly thereafter levels out and turns into a rise, followed by a new diving. A clear signal to other eagles that this area is occupied.
After a brief visit to a pine is the eagle back up again. It is mating season, and with its extremely sharp eye may it very well see other eagles playing in adjacent territories, too far away or otherwise hidden for my binoculars.
I could never understand where it came from, but all of a sudden, it’s another bird on the sky. Shortly thereafter, it is three Golden Eagles who tumbles around in a aerial combat! It’s both looping and tight turns before the intruder has been hunted from the area. A breathtaking show! The area eagles got so exhilarated of the event that they both began to play together. Parallel, they performing nine unusually deep dives before they fly down to the top of a rough pine and mate!
Could not be better, the territorial Golden eagles are in place and the ambition to conduct breeding as well. If the spring weather is favourable and no other facts occur, I hope to come back sometime during the month of June with a report on the number of juveniles in the nest. (Last year, they got two strong youngsters)
