They’ve been called “the Lords of the Sky,” and with good reason. Eagles are among the planet’s largest birds of prey, and there are few creatures so fierce, or so free. And while the bald eagle might hold the American spotlight, the world’s most common national animal is the golden eagle, which is found not only in North America, but in Europe and Asia. With 7-foot wingspans, and plumage of lustrous brown and brilliant gold, these are majestic birds.
Their history here is fraught. But West Texas is golden eagle country.
Dr. Clint Boal is a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Texas Tech University.
“Yes,” Boal said, “historically golden eagles were very common across the Trans-Pecos.”
In 2016, Boal and his colleagues studied golden eagles here. They climbed into nests, to place GPS transmitters on nestlings. And they flew a helicopter from El Paso to Alpine, surveying for eagles.
“They found something like 50 eagle nests,” Boal said. “Now that's really not that many when you look at the expanse of country, but this suggests that some of the eagles have come back and they are certainly nesting in the Trans-Pecos.”
Boal said “come back” – because golden eagles were nearly eliminated here. Beginning in the 1940s, hundreds of eagles were shot each year from airplanes in West Texas. This was sheep and goat country, and eagles were blamed for killing lambs and goats.
Bald eagles had received federal protection in 1940. But, in 1962, that protection was extended to golden eagles, in part because of their “persecution” in our region, Boal said.
Golden eagles’ favored prey are small mammals, especially jackrabbits. But these are truly apex predators – capable of taking a fox, a raccoon, a pronghorn fawn, or, indeed, a lamb or calf. Such kills are the exception, Boal said, an eagle’s equivalent of a “special night at an expensive restaurant.”
And eagles are also scavengers. Researchers learned this was usually the story with apparent livestock kills.
“And that's one of the things they found with eagles,” Boal said, “is that a lot of the thought-depredations by golden eagles was really scavenging of animals that had been killed by something else or had just died.”
In our region, eagles typically build their nests on cliffs, in shaded nooks or east-facing prospects, for shelter from sun. Those nests are immense. Boal’s wife, a biologist herself, once joined him in climbing into a nest to band young eagles.
“And she was able to lay across the nest in her entire body,” Boal said. “She's 5’ 4”, and she could lay across the entire span of the nest. So that gives you an idea.”
Once an eagle has claimed a territory and a mate, it remain remarkably faithful to both. Eagles born in our region stay here, Boal said, but drift about, footloose until they can claim a territory of their own.
In winter, resident birds must share the land with both golden and bald eagles that arrive from more northerly climes. Prairie dog towns become raptor hotspots, with eagles bullying one another off of kills.
“And whoever the biggest, hungriest one is ends up with the prairie dog,” Boal said. “And it's kind of like grade school playground politics.”
The Texas Plains, from Midland to Amarillo, are also eagle country. Populations have declined here as well. That’s due not to aerial gunning, but largely to the elimination of prairie dogs. But Boal has documented nests in the caprock canyons, and all along the margins of the Llano Estacado.
Golden eagles are the embodiment of wild power. It’s fitting that, in the wildest part of Texas, they endure.
