Because I have to say, it seems pretty implausible.
If it hasn’t hit your facebook feed yet, there’s a news story going around on the intertubes that a bald eagle in Montana lifted a deer fawn into the air and lost its grip, dropping the fawn on power lines, causing a power outage. It seems wildly implausible to me; eagles have a large wingspan, but they’re just not that heavy themselves; I just can’t imagine a 15 pound eagle lifting a deer faun that weighs at least that much. Unless deer fauns weigh less than my cat, I just can’t imagine that this is plausible. Anyone care to weigh in?
I have no doubt that an eagle can kill a deer fawn, but I’m still unconvinced that it could lift one thirty or forty feet off the ground in order to drop it on power lines.
EDIT: Reality Chuck, that’s way smaller than I would have guessed. I suppose that’s within the realm of plausibility.
Cool video but not what the OP was asking. You can’t even begin to imagine my disappointment.
However, they have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.
You can’t tell from the picture that the carcass is complete. Maybe the eagle killed the fawn and gutted it, eating a bit for itself before it took it to the nest. Or in light of what Colibri said about carrying larger prey in pieces, maybe this was her second trip and this was just the hide and other pieces rather than the whole 6 lb fawn.
The news story said this happened in East Missoula, Montana. That’s an area with plenty of high hills/small mountains. So the eagle could have killed the deer at a high elevation, and thus did not need to lift it, but only needed to glide down with it. This could be done with a considerably heavier load - perhaps as much as the eagle’s weight.