For Real?

[dihoekstra]

Okay, this may not be the forum for this. If so, feel free to delete the thread. But I am actually curious. A friend emailed me this picture thinking it was pretty impressive. But, I am skepitcal. I think the eagle is too large...may be edited in. What do you think? Is it realistic? I am looking at the eagle relative to the size of the wolf and magpie. :cool:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/248/448555208_c144f83841_o.jpg

[betsy]

The wingspan of a Bald Eagle ranges from 75" (a little over 6 feet) to 8 feet for a female in Alaska, and juveniles have even broader wings than adults. According to this page the nose to tip of tail length of wolves ranges from 4.5 to 6 feet. The tail looks to be about 1/3rd or more of the length of that wolf, and that part hardly counts (in terms of resistance to an eagle attack, I mean).

http://www.wolf.org/wolves/learn/basic/faq.asp#11

That appears to be a Black-billed Magpie, which averages 19" long. In the photo, if we could see all of it, the magpie comes out to 1.5" long, and the body of the wolf, from ears to base of tail, to 2", which would be about 25" or 26" in real life, making this one of the smaller wolves, but not totally outside the size range of the species, if it's a gray wolf, especially if it's not fully grown yet (and it does have a slightly puppyish look to me). A Bald Eagle is about 31" long.


You can see from the report of a study on this page that Bald Eagles (and even ravens) are known to scavenge at carcasses killed by hunters and wolves:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046%2Fj.1461-0248.2003.00522.x

Magpies are also scavengers.

Yup. Looks pretty possible to me. I wouldn't want to get on an eagle's bad side. They're more impressive at close range than we think! (Perfectly good question for the forum, btw.)

[betsy]

Di, how about making the photo available again? It was a rather impressive sight!

[dihoekstra]

Oops! I deleted it from my flickr account, forgetting it would affect my post. Here it is...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/248/448555208_c144f83841_o.jpg

[betsy]

Thanks, Di. I took the liberty of editing the new link into your original post.

[riecket13]

That's a Red Fox, not a wolf . . . looks like one really really cool picture and totally legit, i don't know how you could possibly edit the eagle's right talon grabbing the fox's back right leg
Thomas
p.s. that's an immature Golden Eagle, note the white tail band and the pattern on the bases of the inner primaries and outer secondaries

edit - taken from the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management
Golden eagles sometimes attack large mammals; deer and pronghorns of all ages have been observed being attacked or killed by eagles. Records also exist of bighorn sheep, coyotes, bobcats, and foxes being killed. Occasionally, golden eagles kill calves, sheep, or goats. However, attacks on animals that weigh more than 30 to 40 pounds (14 to 18 kg) are uncommon. Where golden eagles prey on domestic animals, they usually take lambs and kids, but some become persistent predators of domestic livestock as large as 500 pounds (227 kg).

[betsy]

Aha! Thanks for the corrections, Thomas! I recall having a quick glance at the Golden Eagle in Sibley and thinking the white on the one in this photo looked too ragged to be that one, but on a closer look I see the pattern, ragged tho it is.

Red fox makes more sense -- it explains why it's there alone, for one thing, and why the face doesn't look like a wolf's for another. I almost googled foxes, but thought they had larger, pointier ears, so I didn't. I must be thinking of a particular type of fox whose name I forget. Might be something I saw on a nature show on TV, which means it might not even be a North American fox.

Red foxes are smaller than wolves, ranging from 32.56 to 43.19 inches long, and may even weigh less than an eagle. Red fox: 6.6 to 15.4 lbs. Golden Eagle: up to 15 lbs.

OK, this puts a whole new light on the photo. The eagle is not chasing the fox away from the carrion as I originally thought -- it's hunting the fox! According to this page, Golden Eagles are such fine hunters that they don't eat carrion, and among the creatures they hunt and eat are foxes!

http://www.baldeagleinfo.com/eagle/eagle7.html

Oh, OK, Thomas's quote says that, too. This other bit in the quote that Thomas found is the scary part, tho:

...some become persistent predators of domestic livestock as large as 500 pounds (227 kg).

That kind of Golden Eagle could make lunch of any of us. That's enough to give one pause!

[betsy]

Ah -- on another site I learned that this is the 4th in a series of 5 photos documenting this altercation between Golden Eagle and Red Fox, which apparently occurred in Finland. It's a Finnish site it's posted on at any rate. Here's where the entire set is:

http://www.tarsiger.com/index.php?p=pics&sp=pic_id&lang=eng&pic_id=komi1142612071

The photos on that page are just thumbnails -- click on them to get large versions.

[dihoekstra]

Thanks riecket13 and Betsy! That series of photos, Betsy, is just amazing. I am so glad you found it! I will email the link to my friends, so they can see more of the altercation. The hunter that got these shots must have been beside himself to witness such an act of nature...I would have been!