Harpy Eagle: Nightmare on Wings

We were looking for Harpia harpyja, perhaps the largest eagle in the world, rivaled only by the Philippine (monkey-eating) eagle, a species that someone I love very much is trying, hiking, stumbling to see as you read this. Kind of romantic...we have both searched for the world's largest eagles on opposite sides of the world. It's romantic until you realize that we have to be apart an awful lot to do that.

These mega-eagles take large prey--monkeys, small deer, opossums, coatis--and can flip upside down in flight and rip a sloth right off its perch. If you've ever tried to remove a sloth from something it's hanging on to, you know how strong they are. Harpy eagles are stupefyingly powerful. In Greek mythology, the harpies were those horrid winged women with their breasts hanging out who swooped down to take you to the underworld. Shudder. I like it when mythology and taxonomy collide; it makes for colorful names.

To give you an idea just how big this bird is, here is Neil Rettig, filmmaker, falconer and arguably the world's authority on the species, holding a captive bird. Rettig was the first person to make a study of them at the nest, building and living in scaffolding, and producing unforgettable photographs and film of their family life for National Geographic. What an honor it was to meet him and his glorious eagle, in Davenport, no less!


I shot these photos at the Midwest Birding Symposium in Davenport, Iowa in October 2005. Get a load of those talons; compare them with Neil's fingers. Note that he has to support his arm with its heavy leather gauntlet to keep this enormous bird comfortable (and keep his arm from falling off). This bird can weigh 14-20 pounds (Chet Baker weighs 24 pounds).

The harpy's rounded wings (see, no primaries extend from beneath the broad secondaries) help it maneuver in tight spaces, much as do those of the accipiters, only on a huge scale. The long, heavy tail is a good rudder for fast turns. A harpy's feet are almost cartoonish; I remember thinking that the first time I saw one perched along Brazil's TransAmazon Highway in 1979. They looked as though they'd been inflated. The better to squeeze a wooly monkey, my dear. I cannot imagine trusting one with my right arm, even through a leather gauntlet. (Says the woman who handed a giant Amazon otter a chance to crush her wrist...)

I have been reading some excellent books on falconry lately, by Rachel Dickinson (Falconer on the Edge) and Tim Gallagher (Falcon Fever). I wish I had read them before I met Neil. I would have asked him where he takes this bird to fly it; what kind of prey they look for. Woodchucks? Rabbits? Egad.

People get rather complacent around birds of prey when they are sitting calmly on a handler's arm. When the harpy suddenly sleeked and focused, I automatically followed its gaze to see what had interested it, and was horrified, at the receiving end of that laser glare, to see a wriggling infant being wheeled into the auditorium in a stroller. Nothing escapes an eagle's attention; it may be above acknowledging most things, but you can be sure it noticed. I don't think anyone in the room but Neil and yer blogger caught what was going down in the eagle's brain...I could read its thoughts. Good thing the baby's parents couldn't.

Right prey size class, check, defenseless, check, very manageable, check, big sturdy rafters I could bear it away to, check...keep your hand on those jesses, Neil. And, knowing his harpy and certainly needing no input from me, he had already tightened his grip.

I would not bring a poodle into this auditorium. And I would want to know when Neil was flying his harpy eagle, and leave Chet Baker home.




Next: Looking for the Wild Harpy

Harpy Eagle Nest

One of the ornithological highlights of my year was a trek to see the nest of a harpy eagle near Surama Eco-Lodge. There are around 200 known harpy eagle nests in the bird's entire range. Looking down on the unbroken green carpet beneath our airplane or from a promontory, I would imagine and hope that there are more than 200 nests on the planet, but that number serves to give you an idea just how rare an opportunity this would be.

I was glad to see the trail not well-maintained or easily traversed. In fact, walking it was like doing hundreds of leg-lifts as we hopped, stepped and scrambled over log after fallen log. Add a few dozen pounds of camera and optical gear, hike the temperature to about 98 and the humidity to God knows where, and it was like doing aerobics in a sauna. In contrast to those of us who were sweating through our layers of protective clothing, getting funkier by the minute (at 7 AM, no less!) one local birder looked perfectly comfortable. Beautiful, in fact.

I will never cease to marvel at anyone who can navigate tropical lowland forest in a filmy butterfly skirt and flip-flops. I would be convinced that something unknown would run up my leg, or that I'd be impaled on one of the billions of spikes and thorns with which all tropical vegetation bristles. And surely it would, and I would.


She made it just fine. This is her habitat, and with every cell of her body she is adapted to it as surely as I am to the slippery hills and hollers of Appalachian Ohio. I love looking at people just like I look at animals, seeing us as part of an evolutionary continuum and not something set apart. It's OK to do that, whatever the traditional Christian view tells us about our apartness, our supposed dominion over the fish and fowl and beasts. I don't buy it. In my view, we're much more a cog in a big, beautiful machine than the operator of said machine. Mostly, it seems, we're here to mess it up. We throw an ecological wrench into the works every day, every chance we get, but in the end, we're a tiny moving part in a much greater whole. This is a truth she knows in her bones. It is one that most of the rest of us are never able to grasp. And the spikes and the spines seem to part before her, and they tug at our sleeves.

There was so much to look at, but the hike was almost two miles, and we had to keep moving. This little nymph reminded me of some of our satyrs back home.
Finding itself observed, it quickly flitted to hang upside down on the underside of a leaf.
There's so much hiding going on all the time; if it's not cryptic coloration it's cryptic behavior like this. And eyespots to startle and confuse as well.


This is one of the cracker butterflies, so called because its wings snap loudly when it takes off. Crackers like to hang head-down, ready for anything. Kevin Loughlin said this one reminded him of a species called starry night cracker. What a lovely name, even if it's not the right one. Once again I had to be content with getting close, without the satisfaction of a taxonomic cigar.

For the entire hike, I kept myself occupied with the wondrous things all around me, careful not to become so focused on seeing a harpy eagle that the trip would be ruined without reaching that goal. But when the nest finally hove into sight, all those resolutions crumbled. I desperately wanted to see the bird that made this huge pile of sticks, or perhaps the eaglet who came out of it.It's hard to convey just how huge this tree, this nest, really was. Harpies often choose to nest in ceiba trees, the largest emergents in most lowland forest, and a tree that, by some incredible grace, is often revered enough that it is considered bad luck to cut them. Whether that is connected to the fact that it's the tree preferred by nesting harpies, I am left to wonder. I remain wary of the apparent charity of man: traced to its roots, it is usually revealed to be self-serving. Whatever the reason, this ceiba survived the cutting, and the powerful birds who call it home were allowed to stay. It bothers me that we, avaricious and destructive primates that we are, are endowed with the power to grant such a thing.

Next: A harpy eagle, up close and a little too personal.