Flying With Eagles

Bald Eagles used to be endangered because the use of DDT made their eggs too fragile to survive sitting on for incubation. That was a long time ago and they are no longer a rarity. In the Pacific Northwest the Bald Eagle lives in abundance, and hardly a day goes by that we don't see several near our home. This time of year the eagles are extremely numerous at our flying sites, and so it is common to be able to fly with them on any given flight. They are accustomed to flying with hang gliders, and so we share the air in very close proximity, with apparent comfort and confidence. While the nature of wide angle lenses makes the eagles look small and distant, they are actually quite close and quite large. Their size and proximity in flight is something one will never forget once experiencing!

[@eliade66]

Very touching. Thanks for sharing this. I hope soaring in your beautiful area sometime in the future!

[@timmay301]

great video! lovely to fly with these guys

[@pdutube]

Great flight, great experience! Thanks for sharing the vid!

[@LightningGlider]

That's the great part of flying the Northwest sites - eagles at so many of them. Love the loop transition to eagle appearance! The best experience I ever had was the last flight I shared with a friend of mine before he died. We were working a thermal and two eagles joined us; I had two eagles flying 10 feet from my wing tip for much of it. After that I went out and purchased a video camera; it never fails that when I don't fly with the camera I have the eagle experiences. Thanks for posting bro!

[@urs0r]

@tontar I am just amazed by the whole spectacle and how, in these moments, the world must stop spinning for a while. you guys are so lucky. hope i'll get to exp sth similar one day.

[@NevilleStyke]

All you've got to do is train the eagles to throw a loop and you can follow them round! Nice video and nice song.

[@serioussstuff]

nice one

[@redk1te]

Great movie. Beautiful site too. Where is it? Greetings, Henk

[@pimppappi702]

amazing

[@urs0r]

beautiful. bet the bird is scared shitless though :)

[@tontar]

Ah that. That's an accelerometer, a G meter. Flew with it to see what my current G loads were looking like with this glider. Same as always, right around 4 G's positive for loops.

[@tontar]

@urs0r The eagles are pretty badass, the masters of their environment, so as long as they see us, they don't have a problem. They can easily out fly and outmaneuver us. The worst for them is if they don't see us coming and we surprise them. They look down, for prey, not up like prey worried about an aerial attack. So swooping down on them, it's easy to sneak up on them, and that might startle them for half a second, but then they're back to being the super cool, collected masters again. :-)

[@ian9toes]

tontar You mean like this Aaron? kzbin.info/www/bejne/e6GyiaqIeJKVnK8

[@Steveal3aneef1]

peaceful

[@tontar]

@redk1te Western Washington, a place called Dog Mountain.

[@XanHarwoodKarlik]

great video? but what's that contraption strapped to your right basetube? looks extraneous if you ask me :)

[@Steveal3aneef1]

that makes me sad :( dunno why maybe the song or the view .wish iwas that guy

[@CraigRidley1]

bet that eagle was thinkin WTF?

[@tontar]

@shckar Jeff Buckley.

[@bryantherocker]

Songs pretty gay