WHEN NATURE FIGHTS BACK

Michael Wigan investigates how a salmon was able to down a golden eagle

Michael Wigan finds that anything is possible in nature

How do salmon kill golden eagles? I’ll tell you. I was up in the hills at some higher tributaries in mid-December. There were 18 inches of snow and the temperature was about minus 7 ˚ C. Turning the hilltrack’s last corner I saw against the whiteness a flailing eagle on a snowy slope trying to lift off. Why couldn’t it rise? I circuited the eagle and plodded through the snow beneath. The panicking bird had managed to mount a ridge of rushes giving slight elevation.

When I rose up 40 feet away it lurched into the air and then glided past. Attached to its talons were large balls of ice. Their weight had grounded the big bird. Even now it could only just keep aloft. Lacking any grip with its ice-clenched talons it wobbled into a field of sheep – which paid no attention whatever.

What had happened here? I tracked it downhill through the snow. The marks of its feathered wings had scored the snow-crust as it floundered. The tracks stopped near water. Around and about and swooping on the pathetically-burdened raptor were ravens fattened on kelts and deer grallochs.

The eagle must have stood in shallow water long enough for ice to accumulate. Or it had clutched a spent salmon with ice building on it. The stream was caked with floating yellow grue. Here was a dramatic example of natural mortality, nature in hard-knuckled action on a tough winter’s day.

Perhaps we should not disdain kelts. These salmon, which have just spawned, may look repulsive and lack thrust, but in Scandinavia there is a kelt fishery. Far enough north the migration is telescoped into just a few weeks, so keen anglers search for other ways of keeping on the water.

I was once in Sweden in March where the spirit of the occasion resembled fishing energy everywhere. The anglers saluted each other through the leafless trees, had long lunches in outback fishing cabins, and talked of all matters. Serious attention was paid to the casting, and the flow, and anything caught was examined prior to being returned. The parts of the river containing kelts differed slightly, as all back-end UK anglers will know. Heads of pools and streamy runs are less likely spots. The kelt can be found just about anywhere.

The kelt has one awe-inspiring feature. Despite appearances, despite its drained appearance and lacklustre dress, it can return phoenix-like and transformed. Reaching open sea it can somehow locate fresh fish food, and accumulate new power.

Not much is known about kelts. In recent time some enormous specimens have been found beached in mid-winter in Scotland, revealing dimensions of the resident salmon which no-one ever guessed at.

One was on the Brora in winter 2016/17. Anglers simply consider the pictures and wonder that any such leviathan could have inhabited the water they threaded through during the fishing season.

For hatchery purposes these monsters are of little use. Using ordinary muscle power it is hard to strip anything so large for eggs. In Norway’s Alta, the big fish mecca, they have techniques and manpower to assist the stripping of monsters. That is a good thing. In 2017 in a single pool 22 fish were netted for stripping and all of them weighed over 40lb. If you hoisted one of these up by the tail, a flip could break your wrist.

We will never know the size of the salmon that iced up that Sutherland golden eagle. Or whether the ravens finally got their eagle-dinner. But it all gives pause for thought.

Attached to the golden eagle’s talons were large balls of ice