June 13, 2005
Eagle Talons
Aramis celebrated his 14-week birthday on Monday, and it would seem likely that he has fledged by now. We still see one of the parents occasionally sharing food with him, but on Monday we did see what appeared to be Aramis with a small fish. Hard to tell if he caught this himself, but he is gone from the nest a lot these days.
Something else we saw on the Eagle Cam yesterday was what appeared to be the youngest staring up at the camera. We've put this photo side-by-side with our wallpaper photograph to show how much the littlest eaglet has changed.
In other news, Steve Costello, the photographer with the Vermont Bald Eagle Restoration Initiative, recently sent another photo from the day the eaglets were first put into the hacking tower, and the photo offers a good look at the eaglet's powerful feet, including one of the eaglet's talons, which has been banded with a visual ID band.
The claws on a bird of prey are called talons, and on the eagle they're comprised of four powerful toes that can break through tough fish skin or animal skin and then hold tight while carrying the prey home.
The eagle's talons are similar to the osprey's in that they both have tiny spicules on the toes (spicules are little bumps that help the raptors hold onto slippery fish). But the osprey has one advantage that the eagle does not have -- an opposable toe. One of the osprey's front toes can rotate backwards so that two toes are holding the fish from the back and two from the front. An eagle can only hold the fish with one back toe (called the hallux). This means an osprey has an easier time holding onto a thrashing fish.
Something else worth noting about the bald eagle's feet is that the feathers do not go all the way down the leg (called the tarsus), unlike a golden eagle, which has a fully feathered leg. The reason for the difference is that the bald eagle's primary diet is fish, where as the golden eagle's diet is primarily birds and small mammals. The bald eagle's lower body often gets wet during fishing, so in order for its legs to dry faster and to reduce drag in the water, the legs, or tarsi, are bare of feathers.
Also, check out this graphic to learn more about the legs and talons of a bald eagle.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster