In The Shadow Of The Eagle

In the stillness of remote Scottish glens, the golden eagle reigns

- Jim Crumley

SOMETIMES it is the shadow you see first. When summer morning sun clears mountain skylines and its light begins its slow cascade down the far side of the glen, it transforms the buttress and briefly alights on the eyrie itself.

Briefly, because the eyrie ledge is darkly overhung, and because the architecture of the eyrie itself is sited shrewdly in the right-angled junction of two rock walls within the buttress, at what you might cry "the back" of the ledge.

The overhang also projects from both walls. The eyrie is as snugly happed as any Scottish golden eagle chick is ever likely to enjoy.

It follows that direct sunlight on the eyrie is a fleeting phenomenon - strong winds likewise and direct rainfall virtually unknown.

Much of the buttress is lit for much of the summer morning and early afternoon, as are the floor and flanks of the glen. There are mountain ridges on all sides, so if you own up to a fascination for eagle shadows then high summer is arguably the glen's finest hour.

The nesting season of the golden eagle is a long haul. The preliminaries of pair-bonding and defiant displays of territorial defence have begun by January, with nest rebuilding and repair in February to early March, then laying begins in late March or early April. It takes six or seven weeks to hatch one or two eggs (three eggs is a blue-moon occurrence), and fledging takes nine weeks more.

All of this means that by July there is a conspicuous eaglet presence on the eyrie’s ledge.