Re: Deer dropped by eagle knocks out power in Montana

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eeek
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – A deer fawn apparently dropped by a bald eagle onto a high-voltage line was behind a power outage this week in western Montana, a Northwestern Energy official said on Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110617/us_nm/us_deer_power

Warning. May be too grizzly for you.

Hmmmm....the lifting capacity best case for a bald eagle is about 3lbs in the best wind conditions and a new born fawn starts at five pounds. The fawn probably climbed up there, got electrocuted, and the eagle was trying to figure out how to get some of it.

Another possibility is that the fawn was hit by a car, eviscerated, and came out to less than three pounds whereby the eagle had a chance to get it into the air.

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Old Dude

I'm thinking local teens.

No way a deer, especially a few days old fawn, could climb that power poll. Maybe the bald eagle had help from its mate? The two eagles tried to fly off with the fawn but couldn't quite manage it.

As someone already said; it probably wasn't a whole fawn. It could have been eviscerated by other animals and the eagle was scavenging the carcass.

Trying to cook it?

Pretty amazing

Edit: embed youtube video



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2011 05:23PM by eeek.

That was a golden eagle, a bit bigger and stronger than the bald. The bald eagle is about 50% scavenger. The golden hunts more than it scavenges. At least that's what I remember from college long ago.

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Dave
That was a golden eagle, a bit bigger and stronger than the bald. The bald eagle is about 50% scavenger. The golden hunts more than it scavenges. At least that's what I remember from college long ago.

Maybe it was a Golden Eagle that dropped the fawn. Aren't they up there also?

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telfair ave
Maybe it was a Golden Eagle that dropped the fawn. Aren't they up there also?

I'd say it was a golden. Their territory is about the same as the bald. The golden is also found across Northern Eurasia.