Their fierce portraits stare out from cave paintings crafted by long-forgotten Stone Age masters. Their hooked beaks and deadly claws have adorned flags that led armies from Rome to Germany into battle. The spot on which one landed dictated to the ancient Aztecs the place where they were to build a city.

Eagles. For centuries, these seemingly larger-than-life birds have fascinated and inspired us. We venerate them as living symbols of power, freedom, and transcendence. In some religions, high-soaring eagles are believed to touch the face of God. Legend holds that Mexico’s Aztecs so revered the birds that they built Tenochtitlan, their capital, at the spot where an eagle perched on a cactus. Behind this extraordinary reverence, however, is the even more remarkable story of how Earth’s 59 species of eagles live their high-flying lives. That story is told in the NATURE program Eagles, which gives a rare bird’s-eye-view of these masters of the sky. Eagles documents the stunning acrobatics and the ferocious hunting skills that have made these birds the nobility of feathered society, from the plains of Africa and the rivers of Alaska to the forests of the Philippines and the seas off Japan. When eagles come to mind, people commonly imagine some enormous hunter soaring above wide-open spaces on outsized wings. Indeed, eagles are among the world’s largest birds of prey. The largest, including the Harpy Eagle and the Philippine Eagle, can weigh more than 20 pounds and have wings that spread eight feet across. Using their massive, sharp talons, these giants can kill and carry off prey as large as deer and monkeys. But not all eagles fit this stereotype: some are just small balls of feathers content to flap short distances, dining on insects or even fruit. The Crested Serpent Eagle, for instance, is no bigger than a pigeon and spends its days walking and climbing through its African forest home in search of snakes. And the African Vulturine Fish-Eagle is primarily a vegetarian, eschewing meat in favor of rich oil palm fruits. Overall, scientists recognize four groups of eagles: The world’s 12 species of “serpent eagles” (also called “snake-eagles”) typically perch on trees and feed on snakes, frogs, and lizards. The six buzzard-like eagles are forest-dwelling giants, such as the Harpy and Philippine eagles, and prey on large mammals like deer.