Article content continued

Dr. Kerley made the discovery when she went to check the camera trap, which is regularly monitored by zoologists working in the forest region.

“I saw the deer carcass first as I approached the trap on a routine check to switch out memory cards and change batteries, but something felt wrong about it. There were no large carnivore tracks in the snow, and it looked like the deer had been running and then just stopped and died,” she said in a press release.

“It was only after we got back to camp that I checked the images from the camera and pieced everything together. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

The remains of the deer were foundtwo weeks after the attack and steps from where the camera footage was taken.

The sheer rarity of the eagle vs. deer smackdown led her to produce a paper on the subject, published in the current issue of the Journal of Raptor Research. The paper found that, while golden eagles aren’t known to seize on prey so large, these attacks do happen from time to time.

Her study co-author Dr. Jonathan Slaght of the Wildlife Conservation Society said they found numerous, though sporadic, examples of ambitious golden eagles trying to punch well above their weight in the prey department (though they usually go for smaller mammals.)

“The scientific literature is full of references to golden eagle attacks on different animals from around the world, from things as small as rabbits—their regular prey—to coyote and deer,” he said. “The most startling to me was a record from Norway in 2004, when a golden eagle swooped down and carried off a small (about 3 kg) brown bear cub trailing after its mother. Everybody knows not to mess with a brown bear sow with cubs, but that particular eagle was unfazed.”

The image, taken as part of the six-year-long project is a “very rare, opportunistic predation event,” Dr. Slaght said.

Golden eagles are notoriously good hunters and typically weigh 12lbs, stretch their wings eight feet wide and can fly as fast as 160km per hour.

Sika deer stand between 50 and 110 cm talland males can weigh between 150 and 240lb, though some large stags have been known to weigh 350lb. From the photo, it’s clear this particular Sika deer was not full grown.

National Post