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Golden Eagle : Golden Eagle Yaqulpak Once while climbing a mountain in the northwestern part of the Brooks Range, my nephew and I stopped to rest for a few minutes on an overhanging crag. I noticed a lone Golden eagle spiraling lazily in the thermals about a thousand feet above us. Watching him with my binocs, I saw him suddenly fold his wings, drop from his spiral, and dive straight down the side of the mountain toward... us! He must have been traveling at more than 150 mph when right in front of us he abruptly put on his brakes, swooped around us once, then glided off towards the backside of the mountain. Talk about a moment of inspiration for my young nephew...and for me! The Golden eagle is called yaqulpak and tengmiarpak (both meaning big bird) in Yup’ik for good reason. It has a wingspread of up to 7 1/2 feet and weighs up to 13 pounds. It also builds a big nest, up to 10 feet across and 4 feet deep. Yaqulpak dives at almost 200 mph. And it can live for a long time, one bird surviving for 46 years in captivity. After mating, their pair bond can last a lifetime. Another Yup’ik name for this eagle, tengmiarrluk appreciates all of these superlative traits. It means good old bird. When I lived in Scammon Bay I used to keep track of the eagles there. During some winters I noticed they left very late in the autumn and returned early in the spring. This undoubtedly had to do with the availability of hares, since this is their preferred menu. Once on the trail to Chevak I watched an eagle nail a snowshoe hare. It happened almost as quick as lightning. In spring I watched the eagles as they prepared for nesting. The male would spiral upward, then fold his wings, take a nosedive, brake by half-opening his wings, glide up, dive again, and repeat the maneuver many times. Somewhere off in the distance his spouse was judging him with her telescopic eagle eyes. He had to do it well to keep her attention. Before the female lays her eggs, both eagles spruce up one of their old nests (also called aeries or eyries). They usually have a number of them (up to 10) to choose from, most constructed and added to by related generations of eagles. They often alternate from year to year in the use of these nests, which are usually built on cliffs and made of sticks, twigs, roots, mosses, down and fur and whatever other building materials may be available. After laying usually two freckled dull white eggs, incubation is shared by both male and female. When the young hatch separately 43-45 days later, the male again takes part in the feeding of the hatchlings. In fact, during both periods, the male actually hunts and captures more food than the female, bringing it back to the nest to both feed his mate and the young. He rarely feeds the young directly or broods, however, leaving that to the female. Often during this time, the older, stronger eaglet will kill its younger, smaller nest mate. The parents do nothing to prevent this from happening. More than once, when visiting an aerie I know of in the Alaska Range, I have seen the dead sibling hanging over the edge of the nest. About 70 days after hatching, the eaglets fledge from the nest. But they still have much to learn and won’t be on their own for at least another month. Because of their size, Golden eagles are one of our most altricial bird species, meaning the young remain a long time in the care of their parents. During this month-long period they will learn subsistence skills that include how to hunt for everything from hares, parky squirrels and marmots to large insects, sandhill cranes, ptarmigan and caribou calves. When they finally do leave their parents, the young eagles travel a rough road before they become adults. Biologists estimate that 75 percent of them die before reaching sexual maturity at 4-5 years of age. The scientific name for the golden eagle is Aquila chrysaetos, which derives from Latin aquila, meaning eagle, and Greek chrysos and aetos, meaning Golden eagle. Both its scientific and common names derive from the wonderful golden hue of its feathers, especially those of the adult bird. If the number of common names a bird has is any indication of how revered it is by people, this eagle must be close to the top. Here are some of them: royal eagle, mountain eagle, king of birds, Canadian eagle, brown eagle, black eagle, calumet bird, calumet eagle, bird of Jupiter, gray eagle, jackrabbit eagle, ringtail, ring-tailed eagle, war bird, American war bird, bird of Jupiter, white-tailed eagle, and tengmiarrluk (good old bird). P.S. The following is a poem I wrote in the spring of 1986 in Scammon Bay to celebrate the return of the Golden eagles to the Askinuk Mountains. Spring Eagles I’d seen them back in February on the other side of the mountains just cruising round and round and lifting lazily in the high thermals above us when the sun’s time was short in the sky and there were still long shadows cast by surrounding rocky spires... but as I was turning near Talittarsullrat (Sheltering Rocks) there they were again, both of them, perched up on a hanging ledge just watching, and feeling with dark golden feathers the silent warmth of the clear April sky, and listening to the sounds of the breezing snow dust down below... then seeing me or the raven bell-croaking across the midday sun, they lurched out, dropped ever so slightly, caught the upwelling winds, flapped and d r i f t e d and flapped and d r i f t e d again, then g l i d i n g, as eagles do, slipped silently up across the far flanks of smooth tundra snows, catching rising thermals from somewhere, soaring higher and higher and fading finally beyond my ken into the bleached verge of the mountain top where the snow meets the sky. It’s nice to see you again. » List of Yupik Birds

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