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It was a bit before eight with too many cooks in the kitchen preparing breakfast for soon expected company, so I broke away to retrieve the Sunday paper. While out, Jean received a typical, always on the weekend and usually on a Sunday, bird phone call. “Eagle on the ground, can’t fly, seems to have a white tail about a foot long.” Hmmm. Oh well, probably the usual Red-tail call. Yet he did say “Eagle.”
Having turned up the heat and shortened the breakfast hour chit-chat, within ninety minutes, Gary, Carla, Jean and I were on site. Sorry we doubted you, Tom. Immediately, at first glance, Golden Eagle down! Having tried to get off the ground only once, the bird had been on the ground for three hours. Two now departed ravens had finally left it alone.
 A broken wing? Sick? Tired? Shot? They shoot Condors don’t they! On the ground, in deep grass, with not much more than its neck and head exposed, it appeared big and an adult. We could close to within fifty feet or less! Strange, Golden Eagles do not tolerate close approach. With a killing foot the size of your hand, and the strength to carry off a Black-tail Hare, extreme caution is commanded.
Thus, capture requires a strategy (overall approach), a clear, precise, tactic (that is, who is going to do what), and a contingency plan. If successful, transportation and a veterinary hospitable were already lined up. A call was put in for Angela Guy, TMBC’s official eagle expert. Angela has worked with and captured eagles. She was on her way.
Golden Eagles come out of the nest with a very distinctive gold nape. The Tehachapi population swells with over-wintering individuals. It is a mountain bird, yet shies away from un-broken forest, looking rather for cliffs, though in winter can be common in open sage and rabbit brush savannahs. Overall chocolate brown, it is big – length 30 inches, wing span 79 inches, weight 10 pounds. Females are usually perceptibly larger than male.
Gary walked close to take pictures. I moved around in back of the bird for a better view and to note her reactions. She made a short few yards hop and jump. The wings seemed okay. They could be lifted. No drooping. Yet she did not attempt to flush and fly off.
Mountain Eagle Up!
Although having begun as a chilly morning, with fog in the valleys, the sun, sky and earth where quickly warming. And with that heating, thermals were rising as evidenced by a Red-tail and several ravens drifting in circles above. With Angela expected, though keeping binos and scopes on the posed eagle, we talked and milled around.
Whoops! “There she goes!” With just a few gentle no effort shallow wing beats the eagle was up! Surely she’ll come back down? No! Only a few feet up she immediately took hold of a rising thermal. Soaring in relaxed ever-widening circles, the eagle gradually was gaining altitude. Soon the two ravens (Hugin and Munin?) were again aroused resuming their close in, looking like Cessna’s next to a 737, mobbing.
 Against the sun, higher, higher, and higher, almost as high as one can see with ten X glass, this mountain eagle rose as if she was a gentile smoke ring. With her own twelve X plus natural vision, she surely could see all of Mountain Meadows and much of the Tehachapi Valley even more clearly, sharper, than we.
She was not an adult five to six-year bird! Each under-wing and each dorsal wing surface showed a white patch, as did the tail’s base. Take a guess? Most likely a four to five year female Golden eagle, rather than a five to six year adult.
She was so close to the sun I had to break away thus loosing sight of the bird still hounded by the two ravens. But Carla saw her break out. We picked up this fast glide break out from her kettling. She streaked northwest overhead. Past us now, her flight stuttered for two seconds, then, with folded wings, a long drop-like-a-rock stoop.
The plunge had taken her out of sight below the rim of the north-facing portion of the berm of Antelope Dam. Within another two seconds the killer was up on the dam. A rant of ravens lined up to await what morsels might be left.
Angela arrived just as scene-three of this saga was finished. She and her folks reported a Golden Eagle atop a power pole as they came along Highline just minutes before. A pair? Pictures were viewed on Gary’s camera, equipment was packed up, Tom was thanked, and off the caravan went. Heading west on Highline, in the sky, a Golden Eagle was again being harassed, this time, by several ravens. What a poor way to treat winter guests.
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