Eagle girl lands on my doorstep

FROM bard to yurt. Stratford-upon-Avon to Ulan Bator. Othello to Aish

olpan. “The Eagle Huntress” is about Mongolia’s first female in 2,000 years of male history to train an eagle for hunting in the precarious Altai Mountains. She’s on horseback. The winter so severe entire herds die off. Nomadic Kazakhs subsist on small animals for food and clothing.

Teenager Aisholpan Nurgaiv’s eagle lives in their house. She speaks no English. Aisholpan, that is. Eagle

White Wings, I’m not sure. Sony Pictures Classics’ Tom Bernard and

Michael Barker brought her, her father-instructor and an interpreter to my house.

I learned: Bird weight’s 8 kilos, spans 2 meters, loses feathers in sum- mer, eats sheep, hatches in the highest unseen spot with no human around, sleeps with head between her wings, leaves Earth by flying high then falling, trusting security stays friends “except when sometimes angry,” and “while training can bite occasionally” although no vaccine exists.

Aisholpan, wearing sweater, jumper, thick white fur hat and big happy smile “loves New York’s big buildings.” Also — clearly — my vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice cream. She wants to be a surgeon. Her “best hunter” prize money goes toward education. Her father wore a thick studded belt, which I wanted to get off him.

This thrilling documentary is at the Museum of the Moving Image on Saturday, and in theaters Nov. 2.