How Do Golden Eagles Survive Harsh Nordic Winters?

In the north of Europe, winters are hard. But the misery of some secures the survival of others. In Scandinavia, golden eagles live in the mountains and the lowlands. They are capable hunters. But still, they can't survive without the victims which cold and snow claim every winter. Golden eagles are unsocial. They don't tolerate other eagles near their loot. One of them is driven away in the end, even though there is enough for both of them. Who would think of love in such harsh conditions? It remains to be seen if it is love. But golden eagles begin their courtship when it's still winter. Long before the spring sun melts the snow, the ice is broken for the two eagles. They mate up to 30 times before the female lays her eggs in early April. But we'll come back to that. Survival is paramount. An elk cow has fallen victim to the Scandinavian winter and is lying on the edge of a fjord, well preserved thanks to the icy cold. Eagle eyes have quickly discovered the huge food reserve. Now they're racing to get the first and biggest chunks. The fully grown golden eagle gets to the cadaver first and starts to feed on it. But before he gets to the coveted meat of the mammal, he has to work through the elk's dense winter coat. A sea eagle is keeping an attentive eye on the scene. He would love to fight the golden eagle for the prey. It seems to be worth a try. But then it appears that the sea eagle is losing heart. One plucky flap of the golden eagle's wings and the sea eagle takes off. A second sea eagle swoops down from the perpetual dark grey Nordic winter sky. This one is making more of an impression on the golden eagle. But he's full anyway and leaves the field to his cousin with a large yellow beak. In Nordic mythology, Reysvelgir is a giant in the shape of an eagle who brings wind over the land. Golden eagles need vast untouched landscapes where nature is still relatively intact. Today golden eagles mainly live in the mountainous regions of the Alps and the Carpathians. There are many different prey animals for the golden eagle between forests and mountain meadows. Although there are fresh twigs in the eerie, the nest is not yet in use. A caper caly also makes an attractive prey for the eagle. While the smaller female is well camouflaged and rarely leaves the protection of the forest, the conspicuous male caper caly makes for easy prey, at least during the mating season. The hen rarely shows herself openly on the mountain meadow and the male caper caly would also better retreat back into the protection of the mountain forest. A warm wind is blowing through the forest. Nature is waking from hibernation. It's thawing. There are more and more mountain forests where you can find large feathers of this size, eagle feathers once again. Breeding golden eagle couples are back in the heart of Europe. The eagle population also depends on the prevalence of their preferred animals of prey. Loose feathers are drifting across the ground. A caper caly has become the victim of his testosterone levels. During the mating season, large amounts of testosterone flow through a caper caly's body and makes it careless. Golden eagles keep returning to their kill and feed on it until nothing is left. This way, every last bit of the prey is used. Eagles hardly make a dent in the caper caly population. Wherever its habitat is intact, the caper caly produces enough offspring to make up for these losses. Once a species of prey becomes rare, the predators will change over to other, more common species. It's a clever and highly functional policy of nature. The eagle cruises above his territory, but this time he is not on the lookout for prey. The breeding season is upon them and the eagles need to prepare. They have been making regular courtship flights in their territory since the winter, in order to strengthen their partnership. Free as a bird. The phrase has never seemed so apt. Somewhere, on a scraggy tree, the two golden eagles finally land. And they mate yet again. Nothing stands in the way of a new generation of eagles. Or so it seems. This is the ideal habitat for a golden eagle. A varied hunting ground and old, mixed woodlands for breeding. Here is where the story of our eagle chicks begins. The male golden eagle has been incubating the egg for a few hours now. It's the only egg the female laid a few days earlier. It's the end of April and all over the forests, birds have been looking for hiding places for their nests. In the neighbouring valley, to the golden eagles, at a safe distance, the black stork is floating back to its nest. Now that spring has sprung, the eggs need to be kept warm at all times, on both sides. Both eagle parents will keep their precious egg warm day and night for some 45 days. For the black storks, it takes five weeks until the chicks hatch. Body heat is the most important factor. But without sufficient padding and insulation, the egg can't develop. The male golden eagle has a ring. While it was assumed that it's the task of the mother bird to incubate the eggs, our eagle couple take regular turns. The eagle egg was only exposed to the cold of the April day for a few minutes. Now the female is flying towards the eerie. Carefully, the ringless mother eagle settles on her egg. The eagles are nearly motionless when they incubate the eggs, and their neighbours, the black storks, are no different. A bit further down, Eurasian pygmy owls are one step behind. They still haven't laid any eggs. Not all golden eagles make their eerie in old trees. Rock islands in an ocean of trees and shrubs. The main thing is that the breeding place is not easily accessible to predators. Up in the rock eerie, the eggshell has already been broken. Here, two eggs were laid, from which two golden eagle chicks have already hatched. It's mainly the mother who keeps returning to the eerie with green twigs of coniferous and deciduous trees. This way, the nest keeps growing during the two and a half months of raising the chicks. The father's task is to provide food. He regularly supplies the eerie with prey animals, which the female divides up and feeds to their offspring. This time, it's a mouse, which is torn into even smaller morsels and shed out by the mother. 95% of all golden eagles hatch in a rock eerie. The rest of them see the light of day in an eerie on a tree. Like our eagle couple, with their eerie in an old fir tree, who only had one chick to look after. The adult birds take turns in hunting for prey. Whenever wild prey animals become scarce, the fowl kept by humans suddenly become very obvious to the golden eagles. It's the perfect sitting game with a view of the pigeon loft. It's a warm day at the end of April. The eagle chick is played by annoying flies, just like the Eurasian pygmy owl a bit lower down. The largest and the smallest predatory birds of the mountain forests are tormented by the same pest. The female golden eagle is still sitting high above the pigeon lofts, waiting patiently for an opportune moment. In the meantime, the male has been successful, returning to the eerie with what's left of a slain pigeon. He flies off again, leaving the rest of the work to the female. It's always she who tears up the prey and feeds it to the chick. Although individual eagles may prefer certain animals of prey, pigeons are not a golden eagle's regular target. They're usually too quick. It's the young, inexperienced pigeons which tend to become the victim of the Riesfeldgear bird. It's a kind of natural selection. The eerie of the golden eagle is slightly smaller than that of a sea eagle. It's 1.5 metres in diameter and roughly 1 metre in height, similar to that of the black storks in the neighbouring valley. Here, three insatiable young birds are waiting for their meal. In the eagled eerie, the mother has to present tiny morsels of prey to her little one. At the black stork families, whole fish is again on the menu. In total, the eagle mother will feed some 40 kilograms of prey to her offspring over time. After feeding, the little snowy white black storks can play with each other, while the eagle chick has to make do with his mother. When it gets cooler, the female offers warmth and comfort. There's another breeding bird in the eagle's territory, a common tree creeper. Even if the Eurasian pygmy owl is tiny, it is a highly specialised and dangerous bird hunter. A Eurasian pygmy owl will kill over 200 songbirds and small mammals to raise the offspring of one hatch. The tiny owl has seven chicks to look after. All the waste from the nursery is just thrown out of the door. The eagle mother keeps taking green twigs of coniferous and deciduous trees to the eerie. We don't know why she does that. Maybe fresh twigs are a better building material than dry branches. She's always keen to keep her eerie spic and spam. Some biologists suspect that the green twigs and leaves have an antiseptic effect, but there is no proof for this theory as yet. The struggle to feed their offspring and to maintain the nest's furnishings completely fills the eagle's day. The eagle couple will use this eerie for many years. They will keep repairing and expanding it, just like the black storks do. The eagle mother is leaving the eerie to go hunting. It's early May and warm, and the chick doesn't need to be constantly kept under her wings anymore. In Europe's mountainous forests, it's not only the eagles and storks who breed now. The plant kingdom is also all about passing on its genes. Old Locuno's mixed beech forests are also the home of Europe's most magnificent orchid, the lady's slipper orchid. Wherever lady's slipper orchids blossom and golden eagles have their eeries, nature is at least to some degree still intact. The male golden eagle is bringing another rodent to the eerie. This time it's a huge water vole. And the female is bringing another twig, but she immediately takes over control of the nest. Black storks have little to fear from golden eagles. They are able to defend themselves and never let the chicks in their eerie out of their sight. Here, both adult birds are responsible for feeding the young chicks. The eagle chick, on the other hand, is only ever fed by the female. The prey, rich in protein and energy, which is brought to the nest for weeks on end and is then digested here and there, means the concentration of nutrients is enormously high. Leftover food and manure fertilise the surrounding forest ground. That's why there are nutrient-loving plants, such as the common nettle, growing underneath the eerie. Wherever the common nettle is thriving, the red admiral also flourishes. The caterpillar of this butterfly feeds exclusively on common nettles. This way, the large birds in the forest involuntarily cater for the offspring of a little butterfly. Whereas the storks need a total of 100 days to develop from edge to fledgling, the admiral takes less than a fortnight. Rain showers move across the hilly landscape of central Europe. Some of the mountain dwellers only wake up properly in this muggy, warm weather. The eagle is patrolling the edge of the forest. He doesn't particularly like hunting inside the forest. Most of the small animals live in the mountain meadows between the old trees. The female eagle has spotted something. Sometimes even the large birds have to make do with very small prey. The male has been watching what's going on and glides across the meadow towards his partner. And here's another inhabitant of the mountain meadows. The corn crake with his funny song. The eagles have demolished their prey. They fly back towards the erie with a full crop. Although temperatures no longer drop so much in early May, a young eagle can quickly cool down when his downy plumage gets drenched in the rain. At least the chicks in the rock erie have a massive roof over their heads. But in the tree erie, the eagle mother mustn't leave her offspring alone for long periods. The chick with his delicate downy plumage doesn't fit under the adult bird anymore. He snuggles up to his mother where it's warm and reasonably dry. Sooner or later, the rain will stop. The forest is drenched. And the eagle chick? He has survived the shower unscathed. In rainy years, lots of eagle chicks die in their nests. For at some point, the female has to leave the erie. But as long as the May sun is shining, there is no danger. While the adult bird glides across her territory high in the sky, the young eagle busies himself with the food leftovers in the erie. He still has to learn what is edible and what is not. Daily eagle routine prevails in the rock erie too. The biggest distraction for the young ones is the adult birds arriving with food. Wooded precipices are popular breeding territory for other bird species too. Like the common raven, for instance. Being neighbours with them is not entirely free of conflicts. Surprisingly, it is the common raven who wears the pants in short bursts of exhibition fights in the air. But this encounter doesn't have any consequences. He may be the king of the mountains, but the golden eagle is not the absolute ruler of his kingdom. Neighbours which make life hard for him are not the only problem for this large bird of prey. Even in natural forests, it is not always easy to catch prey. The times when huge herds of ungulates followed by large predators migrated through these valleys are well and truly gone. But wherever man cultivates the meadows, uncut animals like hares and fawns inevitably appear. Our eagles keep returning to the erie with food from the valley of the humans. There is another troublemaker near the eagle erie, a common buzzard. Eagles are easily disturbed near their erie. The female keeps a keen eye on her environment. The common buzzard is the most prevalent bird of prey in central Europe. Some 200,000 common buzzard couples breed here, half of them in Germany. But why is the common buzzard so prevalent, while the golden eagle is said to be an endangered species? The female eagle is leaving the erie. The fact that golden eagles are so rare is hardly due to the relatively small common buzzard's bravery. He will even attack the large and dangerous golden eagle when he gets near the buzzard's nest. The downfall of eagles in Europe is well documented. It started as early as the 17th century. First, they disappeared from the east of Germany and, in the following century, from the center of Germany. Soon afterwards, there were no golden eagles left in the southwest. And, at the end of the 19th century, the heraldic bird had also disappeared from the huge forests of the northeast of Germany. In the end, the last eagles had withdrawn to Europe's mountain areas, which were difficult to access. But why? For centuries, man hunted eagles mercilessly. They were seen as hunting competition, as a loathsome enemy of the farmer and his animals. Mankind wanted to eradicate them, just like it had eradicated wolves, brown bears and lynxes. The state even handed out rewards for dead golden eagles. Today, birds of prey are strictly protected. Illegal shootings are rare. But the golden eagle still doesn't manage to leave the area of its retreat in the Alps and Carpathians and settle in the Lonins again. Instead of the eagles, lumberjacks arrived in the forests. First, with axes and saws, later on with ever bigger and ever more efficient machines. Society, eager for growth, has rediscovered the timber business. Never before was it possible to cut and process so much wood in so little time. In some places, logging has doubled in the past ten years. The demand for raw materials is ever increasing, leaving no room for natural slow growth and decay. Our forests are becoming ever younger, denser, darker. The forest is increasingly an industrial estate for the timber industry. It's no wonder that the last eagles have their territories in regions that are difficult to access and in national parks. Black storks and numerous other species also suffer from the economic pressure on our forests. Since hunting the mighty bird of prey was banned, the golden eagle is at least no longer in acute danger of extinction. But how many eagles breed on this continent in the future will also depend on how the European forests are used. While the young black storks immediately devour everything their parents bring to the nest, the eagle area is usually full of leftovers of the prey or even whole animals like this dormouse. The female eagle goes out to hunt again, while the chick is busy with the dormouse. It still seems to be a good year for eagles and the other birds breeding in these forests. Some two months after they hatched, the young eagles in the mountain area have grown a lot. The eagles have a lodger, and in their monotonous daily routine they welcome every distraction. The bank vole seems to find something special in the eerie. At least, he keeps coming back to look for useful stuff between twigs, grass and leftover food. The red admiral is attracted by the droppings. This is where he can stock up on mineral salts. The bank vole even raises her offspring underneath the eerie. Weeks pass, and it seems nothing could dull the skies above the vast habitat of the eagles. But success and ruin are often close together. The adult bird returns to the tree eerie. Today it's hedgehog for lunch. The young eagle is getting his dark youth plumage, and is now largely impervious to the weather. Spells of bad weather are a danger to the bird's offspring. Not just because of the wet and the cold. They can also be the reason why birds of prey suddenly have less to kill. Then, the young eagles, unable to fly, are trapped. One of the two young birds in the rock eerie is not doing well. He is on his last legs. His sibling seems to check up on him. The little eagle is dead. He almost made it. In the mountains, the weather is more changeable and unpredictable than in the lowlands. Many of the eagle's animals of prey will stay in their hideouts during spells of bad weather. Hunting becomes more difficult. The eagle mother in the rock eerie feeds her perished offspring to the surviving one. Eagles don't know piety. They have no morals. Survival is paramount. But there are two sides to every coin. Rainy spells are a threat to the golden eagle's offspring. But the so-called bad weather, on the other hand, creates the nursery of another mountain resident. Waterlogged car tracks are just what small grey amphibians have been waiting for. Yellow-bellied toads depend on copious rainfall. As their habitat will be gone again in no time, the toads waste no time mating. However, the two of them don't display the same fervour for saying, I do. It's a steamy and warm June day. The remaining young eagle in the shady rock eerie prepares to leave the nest. The adult birds stay close. They show the little one how to fly across their territory. They try to lure him away from the eerie. From time to time, the male eagle flies to the eerie to deliver some prey. But then he is quickly off again. And finally, the young eagle, with his chocolate-coloured youth plumage, leaves the eerie. He will continue to circle and hunt with the adult birds for another five months. Now, in June, there is an abundance of prey in the eagle's habitat. Fully grown young foxes are snoozing in their den. But the animals keep interrupting their daytime sleep. Then they are off on expeditions with fun and games. For the golden eagles, the distracted foxes are an easy and frequent prey. The eagle couple don't bring any more food to the tree eerie. Now they feed themselves and later place part of their prey in exposed locations in their breeding grounds to lure the young eagle from the nest. A little later, the tree eerie is empty. The young bird has left. He is already hopping and flying about his environment. Nothing goes to waste. Whatever the eagles leave will be taken by others, such as the Eurasian jay. Our young eagle from the tree eerie is still looked after by his parents, has food served to him and is taught hunting techniques. Next year, he will be a fully grown golden eagle. And at some point, he will have his own realm and maybe his own eerie. The black storks have made it as well. Together with the adult birds, they circle their breeding grounds in the Carpathians and get ready for the long flight south. Next year, they will return and at some point, they will raise their young somewhere in a remote mountain forest.