Spanish Secrets: The Eagle Has Landed
Imagine the thrill of watching the "neighbours'' as they soar and zoom overhead, hunting for lunch. Craig Briggs's Galician neighbours are majestic eagles - and a grandstand view of their aerobatic displays sure beats watching a video.
Having moved into our new home last summer, one of our first jobs was meeting our new neighbours.
Our house is the last one out of the village, but just up the lane from us is the dead centre of the village (the cemetery), which gave all the villagers the perfect excuse to stop and introduce themselves, bringing with them lettuce or tomatoes, and of course lettuce and perhaps some eggs.
And don’t forget lettuce on their own - the odd fifty or so.
Any flowers though were for our silent neighbours at the cemetery.
Our most impressive neighbours were a pair of eagles which nested close to us in a nearby wood. Later that summer they too brought a gift - a single offspring.
As the summer drew to a close they, like others in the village, left for warmer climates.
It had never crossed my mind that they would return, but this year at the end of April they did, and not just the two adults but also their considerably larger offspring. Daily we watched them from the garden effortlessly gliding on the thermals, eyes fixed on the ground below.
Whilst watching a few days ago the youngster and one of the adults were flying together. Yhe youngster would soar above its parent, and, folding its wings back, dive, swooping within inches of the older bird’s wings before soaring again and repeating the spectacular aerobatic display.
As the young bird dived by, its parent would dip one wing, rolling out of the path of its playful offspring. After six or seven such manoeuvres the adult bird had obviously had enough of these games. On the next dive it showed its intolerance by turning its head skyward towards the diving youngster and squawking loudly.
The youngster took note and flew to a safe distance from its parent.
Later that week a fourth eagle appeared, similar in size to the younger bird. They quickly paired up, and whether it was love at first flight or not I couldn’t say, but we haven’t seen the youngster since.
By now curiosity had got the better of me. What kind of eagle were these magnificent majestic creatures which were providing us with such thrillingly spectacular aerobatic displays?
Having never previously had an interest in birds of the feathered variety, I turned to the World Wide Web for an answer. Now its one thing knowing that this wonderfully wise Web has all the answers, but its another finding them
Amazingly after only two or three hours I found what I was looking for. Not only did it show me video of these beautiful birds in flight but also gave me sounds of them squawking.
Circaetus gallicus, that’s what they are. Better known as the Short-toed Eagle. They have an adult wing span of between 1.85m (7 ft) to 1.95m (7ft 4”), and they live almost exclusively on snakes.
Yum yum!
