Eagle hatched in West is taking off for Germany
AGIANT eagle is today leaving its Cornish birthplace to migrate to a new home in southern Germany.
The galvanised metal sculpture, with a 2.5-metre (8ft) wingspan, has been created by Thrussells in their Bodmin Moor workshop for a bird of prey wildlife park in the Black Forest.
Father-and-son team Gary and Thomas Thrussell are known for larger-than-life insect pieces that can be seen in California, Denmark and across the UK, including the
Eden Project. More recently they have been spreading their wings to make birds including a rook for Fowey Town Council in honour of Daphne Du Maurier – one of her most famous creations was the horror story, The Birds, which became a Hitchcock film.
That piece attracted the attention of foreign tourists in the town, leading to a feature on the sculptors in a German magazine and the commission from the millionaire owner of the wildlife park in Triberg.
When they started in June, Gary, 60, and Thomas, 32, took inspiration from Sarah Worne’s collection of birds of prey in Fowey, including a North American red-tailed hawk. “It’s actually based on a European sea eagle, but Sarah’s birds helped us get the feathering right,” said Gary. “The deadline was very tight and until you have done all the parts you can’t be sure you have got it completely right.” They were paid £29,000 to create the bird, which with its base weighs more than half a tonne.
“If you divide the money by all the hours of work, it is probably an average wage,” he said.
The two creators are driving the sculpture to Germany in a van. “We are a bit possessive,” admitted Gary.
The eagle will cause a stir in its town-centre home: Triberg is famous for the cry of a smaller bird as a manufacturing base for cuckoo clocks.