beak – The Michael Lam Collection's Blog

In 2012 I had written a blog post titled “Airwolf”, that featured a photo of the Harpy Eagle, this year I was asked if I had any images of the Harpy, as the people responsible for the Explore Guyana magazine were looking for one. I had only taken photos of the Harpy on two occasions, and I told them as much; I even told them that I’m not a birding or wildlife photographer, so the images I have would likely not be ideal for their use. With people like Kester Alves, Victor Sarabo, Meshach Pierre, John Persaud, Andrew Snyder (to name a few) and others out there taking some gorgeous bird and other wildlife photos, nothing I had taken could compare with the quality of images I’ve seen out there, except that I couldn’t remember seeing any of the Harpy, so couldn’t point them in any specific direction other than to tell them to please look around for something better than mine.

The long and short of it… I had sent them three images, and they chose to use one. I can now proudly say that one of my images was a Cover image for Explore Guyana.

Here is the Original Image (click on it to see it in the Gallery)

And here is a small image of the cover as designed by Advertising & Marketing Services (AMS)

Click on the cover image to go to the Explore Guyana Magazine’s Homepage

In my youth, which sometimes seems not so far gone (and the rest of this sentence will tell you how far), I looked forward to Saturday afternoon to see an episode of Airwolf, a television serial about a high-tech helicopter, it starred Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine. I was recently reading an article about the Harpy Eagle and it was referred to as the “Flying Wolf”, and I thought Flying Wolf = Airwolf.

Of course, I would not have had an opportunity to photograph the “Airwolf” of the Television series, so this blog post is obviously about the Eagle 🙂

The Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) is one of the largest and most powerful birds of prey in the world (one of the reasons it is sometimes called the Flying Wolf), it is a grey bird, its plumage consisting of feathers from slate-black, to grey to white. They make their nests high up in the canopy of the Rainforest in the forks of the trees, and are a monogamous species, mating for life, they raise one chick at a time, providing for that chick for up to ten months before sending it off on its own.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing a Harpy and its young in the wild, and of being able to view a young one up close (not in a cage in the zoo), they are marvellous birds, with talons that certainly scare me!

I’m not sure which would be scarier, seeing Stringfellow Hawk in a chopper diving towards me or one of these guys swooping, wings pulled back and talons poised…