The Philippine eagle wears a crest of long feathers that flares into a shaggy mane around pale grey-blue eyes — a face unlike any other eagle's.Source 1
It is one of the largest and most powerful forest raptors: a metre of bird with a six-and-a-half-foot wingspan, flying fast through dense trees.Source 2Source 1
It hunts the canopy — civets, flying squirrels, snakes, even other raptors — sometimes in pairs, one bird distracting while the other strikes.Source 1
Everything about it is slow: a single egg every two years, and a chick that stays with its parents for nearly two more.Source 2Source 1
One pair needs four to eleven thousand hectares of forest — so every eagle lost usually means a forest lost first.Source 2
It survives on four islands and nowhere else on Earth, and it is the national bird of the Philippines.Source 2Source 1
The threats are the chainsaw and the gun: deforestation, and at least one eagle shot every year despite protection.Source 2
The answer is patient and local: the Philippine Eagle Center breeds and rehabilitates eagles in Davao, and Indigenous forest guards patrol the nesting forests.Source 3Source 4
Released eagles now fly with GPS trackers — trained first to avoid the power poles that could kill them.Source 5
To witness the Philippine eagle is to hold four islands' forests in one gaze.Source 2
