In an extremely unusual situation, a golden eagle was killed after a string of attacks in Norway. The bird attacked four people, including a toddler.
Golden eagles are a widely distributed species with an average wingspan of around 2m. Though intimidatingly large birds, golden eagles usually hunt small prey, such as rabbits and marmots. Attacks on humans are practically unheard of. Yet, over a few days last week, a young eagle showed behavior that was “radically different from normal.”
A brazen attack
The most recent (and final) attack may have been the most terrifying. The eagle grabbed a 20-month-old toddler while she was playing in her garden in Norway’s central Trondelag region. Fortunately, her mother and a neighbor were nearby. It took both adults to force the eagle to release the toddler, who needed stitches and was left with scratches on her face.
“But it kept coming back,” the child’s father told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. It was undeterred even when “the neighbor chased it away with a stick.”
The incident with the toddler appears to have been the fourth attack. Two days previously, 31-year-old Francis Ari Sture was out hiking when he thought a human had tried to shove him from a cliff. Turning to confront his attacker he came face to face with an extremely aggressive golden eagle.
“We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture told the Associated Press. Then, the eagle launched a barrage of attacks, chasing him down the mountain and scratching at his head and face. Sture managed to escape and a local hospital treated him for deep wounds to his face.
Francis Ari Sture with a wound on his face. Photo: Francis Ari Sture
An eagle with a behavioral disorder
A day before that, the eagle attacked Mariann Myrvang. The eagle landed on her shoulders, forcing her to her knees under its weight. Myrvang’s husband had to beat it with a tree branch to drive it away. Like Sture, Myrvang required a hospital visit.
Alv Ottar Folkestad from BirdLife Norge believes that the young female eagle must have had a “behavioral disorder,” that prompted the highly unusual sequence of attacks.
Whatever the cause, the bizarre reign of terror is now over. Local game warden Per Kare Vinterdal arrived shortly after the attack on the toddler and killed the eagle.
