Northern Rivers Talking Turkey

On Soaring Wings
I round the corner and pulled up on the top of the ridge; from here I can see the mountains displaying the volcanic past of the landscape, Mt Lindsay, Mt Warning and the twin peaks of Mt Barney. In front of me a nude paddock has a lone dead stag, standing as a reminder of a fallen forest and at the top of this dead tree is perched a pair of huge birds.
They are of course a pair of wedge-tailed eagles, Australia’s largest bird of prey and the fourth largest in the world, they can have a wing span of up to 2.5m and with a standing height of 1m, they are impressive and unmistakable and are always a welcome sight soaring above the ridge on the rising thermals. The birds are scanning the open landscape around them, rotating their heads to the most unlikely positions as they turn to look backwards. Wedge-tailed eagles have exceptional eyesight which includes the ability to see infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths, this pair are scanning the paddock for any movement that may signify suitable prey, they are opportunists and will take anything that is the right size such as small wallabies, echidnas, rabbits and they are even known to snatch koala joeys out of the trees. We lost one of the Homeleigh koala joeys last year to a wedge-tail, the dramatic snatch and grab was witnessed by an astounded horse rider who just happened to be riding by.
The pair of eagles I am watching are getting fidgety and ready to take off; the first spreads its wings and drops into a low glide over the paddock and off the ridge high into the sky in the east. The second eagle then spreads its wing and soars towards me, I look up at the massive bird that is only meters above my head and I am stunned by its size and the silence, as it glides above me it does not make a sound.
It is the breeding season for the eagles and it commences with the pair strengthening their bond, they perch close together, preen one another and perform fantastic aerial displays which sometimes end in a breathtaking cart wheeling dive as the birds join talons and plummet towards the earth, they spiral together until at the last moment they let go and pull out of the fall. Finally the birds will select this year’s nest site which may mean building a new nest from scratch or repairing an old one, the construction is a large stick nest that is usually built in a tall tree that overlooks their territory. Nests can be reused for many years and old nests may grow into massive structures as new sticks are added each year. My mum has been watching an eagle’s nest on her place for several decades now and on one of my visits home she took me to see it. We climbed for a couple of kilometres to the top of a hill and looked across a narrow gully to the opposite hillside, we could see down into the eagles nest. A young chick stretched its downy wings while it waited for its parents to bring some fresh meat. Although wedge-tailed eagles are often encountered on the ground feeding on road kill they will only take freshly killed meat to the nest, most prey is caught on the ground in a gliding attack and yet this magnificent bird can soar to heights of more than 1800 meters. I am sure that most Australians have watched a wedge-tailed effortlessly circle higher and higher into the sky until it is just a dot and then kept watching until the dot vanishes altogether.