JLRosso at aol.com writes:
> To even out these discussions of brave attacks of Golden Eagles on
> overwhelming prey, I once saw a Golden Eagle fly by with an American
> Coot in its talons. It landed not too far from us and the coot
> demonstrated that it was still alive by chasing the eagle around the
> oak tree.

I've also witnessed a similar situation in France a few years ago when
a male Marsh Harrier (??) _Circus aeruginosus_ made an food offering to
its female (I don't know the English technical word for this behavior where
a male drops a prey and the female catches it before it touches the ground,
help anyone?).
The prey the male had in its talons was a small passerine. When the male
opened its talon, the passerine flew away!!!

--
--------------------------------------------------
A bird in the bush is better than two in the hand.

Serge Le Huitouze Intelligent Software Group
email: serge at cs.sfu.ca School of Computing Science
tel: (604) 291-5423 Simon Fraser University
fax: (604) 291-3045 Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6 CANADA
http://www.isg.sfu.ca/~serge/