Golden Eagle

Also known as: American war bird, bird of Jupiter, black eagle, brown eagle, calumet bird, calumet eagle, Canadian eagle, gray eagle, jackrabbit eagle, king of birds, mountain eagle, ringtail, ring-tailed eagle, royal eagle, war bird, white-tailed eagle.
What is the scientific name?: Aquila chrysaetos

Pronounced AK-wih-lah kris-AY-ee-tos
What does it mean? "Golden eagle, eagle." Aquila is Latin for "eagle." Chrysaetos comes from two Greek words, Chrysos meaning "golden" and aetos meaning "eagle."

Where are they located? How many subspecies are there?: Throughout most of North America but resident only in the west and as far south as Mexico. Breeds in Canada, Alaska, and portions of the western United States (Palmer 1988a). There are five to eight subspecies of the golden eagle, but only one occurs in North America, A.c. canadensis (Palmer 1988a).
Where do they live?: In a variety of habitats, from open country to open forests. Usually not found in dense forests (Farrand 1988).
What do they look like?: Completely brown with splash of gold on its neck and head. Unlike the bald eagle, the golden eagle's eyes are brown and the beak is black.
How big are they?: Females are larger than males and together they are between 30 to 40 inches in length (Palmer 1988a). The wingspread of the female is between 7 and 7½ feet and the male between 6 and 7 feet (Brown 1976). Females weigh between 8 and 13 pounds and males between 6 and 10 pounds (Palmer 1988a). Exceptionally large golden eagles can have a wingspread over 8 feet and weigh up to 14½ pounds (Brown 1976).
How long do they live?: One study found the average lifespan of golden eagles to be just under two years (Palmer 1988a). One of the oldest found in the wild was aged 17 years, 1 month (Klimkiewicz and Futcher 1989). In captivity they have lived to be over 40 years old (Brown 1976) and Wildlife Images has a golden eagle that is 45 years old.
How fast can they fly?: Usually travels at 28 to 32 miles per hour (Brown and Goodwin 1943). One of the highest speeds recorded is 120 miles per hour (Brown 1976).
What do they eat?: Chiefly rodents, hares and rabbits (Palmer 1988a). Ground squirrels seem to be the prey of choice but the golden eagle prefers hares and rabbits when they are abundant (Brown 1976). Birds are also sometimes eaten including great blue herons, geese, ducks, goshawks, red-tailed hawks, short-eared owls, quails, pigeons, crows, and other small birds (Bent 1937).

Interesting notes: One of the more unusual things written about the golden eagle, as is sometimes written about the bald eagle, is its alleged ability to lift large prey off the ground and fly with it to their nest. They have been reported to carry off calves and lambs (Bent 1937; Palmer 1988a), but such prey would have to be unusually small individuals. An experiment performed with one golden eagle weighing 11 pounds found that it could not lift a 5¼ pound weight attached to its feet off of the ground (Arnold 1954). This is a far cry from the 10 to 11 pound capacity that one researcher had estimated (Gilbert 1926). It is thought that the actual weight-carrying capacity is about 21% of the eagle's own weight (Huey 1962). Since golden eagles, males and females combined, can weigh between six to 13 pounds this would put their weight-carrying capacity at between one and three pounds. Another researcher thought that the golden eagle might be able to carry a seven pound jackrabbit a short distance, but that most large prey would have to be "dismantled" before being carried aloft (Palmer 1988a).

Wildlife Images often gets birds that have been hit by cars. It is not always known why they do this (see the Introduction), but sometimes birds are hit because they are feeding on something that has been killed and is lying in the road. The following episode of two oil company workers from Wyoming relates one of these accidents. As they were driving...

...they topped a small rise just when an eagle was eating a jack rabbit in the road. The bird did not have time to get in the clear, and non-shattering glass had not yet come into general use. The bird crashed through the windshield, taking the glass with it. When the men stopped and took stock, they found that neither of them was seriously hurt, and they had a very dazed eagle sitting in the back seat! They drove on into the town of Midwest, and the bird remained perfectly quiet. It didn't appear to be injured but just stunned, and after several hours, it recovered and flew away (Buell 1954).

Although golden eagles can't lift big and heavy things, this doesn't mean they are afraid of them. Golden eagles have been known to attack several other predatory animals, including the great horned owl (Henry 1939), red-shouldered hawk (1947), and even coyotes. The two following accounts of golden eagles "dominating" coyotes illustrate why they have been called the "king of birds."

In the first example, a golden eagle was observed from an airplane to swoop down on a coyote, grabbing a chunk of its hair and knocking the coyote to the ground. The coyote jumped back up and snapped at the eagle, but the surprised coyote was no match for swift flying eagle. In the second example, again observed from a plane, a golden eagle was seen swooping down on a coyote and clawing it in the back. Even though the eagle had torn a piece of the coyote's skin and it began to bleed, the coyote kept running and failed to defend itself. Both of these situations were disrupted by the presence of the airplane and so we will never know what the eagles would have continued to do, but this does illustrate their power in dominating other predators (Ford and Alcorn 1964).