Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP - Getty Images
A hunter holds his golden eagle during the "Salburun" hunting festival in Bokonbayevo, Kyrgyzstan, Oct. 6.
Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP - Getty Images
A hunter holds his golden eagle in Bokonbayevo, Kyrgyzstan, on Oct. 6.
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Rick Wilking / Reuters
Dennis Wiist, Wildlife Repository Specialist walks through a freezer containing eagles ready for shipment at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colorado March 26. Eagles are sacrosanct for many tribes, and employees at the National Eagle Repository provide them with feathers, wings and talons - and in some cases whole carcasses - for religious rituals. But the Indians' demand outstrips the repository's supply. Each year the repository receives about 2,300 dead bald and golden eagles, gathered by wildlife agents and others.
Rick Wilking / Reuters
Dennis Wiist, Wildlife Repository Specialist, inspects a Bald eagle at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colorado on March 26. The feathers from a bird such as this are the most sought after by Native American Indian tribes.
Rick Wilking / Reuters
Dennis Wiist, Wildlife Repository Specialist, inspects the feathers around an eagle's foot at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colorado on March 26.
Reuters reports -- A wildlife specialist splays the wings of a dead golden eagle shipped in from New Mexico and is pleased by what he sees.
"This one is an awfully good bird," Dennis Wiist of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says. "There's not too much damage, which is extremely rare."
Wiist will bag the eagle, freeze it and then have it delivered to a waiting Native American Indian tribe.
Eagles are sacrosanct for many tribes, and Wiist and his colleagues at the National Eagle Repository provide them with feathers, wings and talons - and in some cases whole carcasses - for religious rituals. But the Indians' demand outstrips the repository's supply.
Rick Wilking / Reuters
Dennis Wiist, Wildlife Repository Specialist (background), inspects an eagle at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colorado on March 26, as adult Golden eagle wing feathers ready for shipping are displayed in the foreground.
Each year the repository receives about 2,300 dead bald and golden eagles, gathered by wildlife agents and others. But it gets more than 3,000 requests a year for whole birds or parts. There are some 6,000 entries on the waiting list.
"We just don't have the supply. Our inventory is stretched," said Bernadette Atencio, supervisor of the program for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The repository, located about 10 miles from downtown Denver, was established in the 1970s to meet the needs of American Indians but some don't want to rely on it because it can take so long to get a bird, even as the population of bald eagles has largely recovered from the threat of imminent extinction.
Rick Wilking / Reuters
A sign at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Eagle Repository shows the numbers of requests for eagle parts in 2011 in Commerce City, Colorado March 26.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this cool photo of a crow landing on an eagle.
Hyongchol Kim / Caters News Agency
Photographer Hyeongchol Kim captured the moment while photographing birds on the plains in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
According to Caters News, the photographer was stunned when he saw the smaller bird swoop in on the eagle and perch himself on its back.
He said: "I saw the crow flying towards the much bigger eagle, and prepared myself to capture the fight on camera. However, the bird just hovered above the eagle for a few seconds - and then appeared to just latch onto his back.
"The eagle didn't seem to mind at all - I think they must have been friends."
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TODAY.com multimedia producer Mish Whalen wonders if her two parakeets ever think about flying on each other's backs.
Matthew Cavanah / Colmbia Tribune via AP
Ruth Payton, 82, of Macon, in red, watches Watson, a 5-year-old American bald eagle, take flight in Long Branch State Park in Macon, Mo. Payton, who is terminally ill with hemolytic anemia — a disease that prematurely destroys red blood cells — said she had always wanted to see a bald eagle. Her hospice worker, Randi Petre, contacted the University of Missouri's Raptor Rehabilitation Project, which arranged for Payton to come see Watson be released back into the wild. The eagle was brought to MU's Raptor Rehabilitation Project last month after being found in Randolph County with severe lead poisoning, likely the result of ingesting contaminated fish or deer.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Robin Corcoran via AP
This Jan. 24, 2011 photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a female eagle who died after being electrocuted in Kodiak, Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A Kodiak Island bald eagle survived 25 years of Alaska hazards but met an unfortunate fate last month on the crossbar of a utility pole: electrocution.
A band attached to its leg showed the bird to be the second-oldest bald eagle documented in Alaska and one of the oldest in the country.
"It would be, based on the bird-banding record that I've seen, one of the top 10 oldest birds ever recorded," said Robin Corcoran, a wildlife biologist from the Kodiak Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Read the full AP story from here.
Paul White / AP
A bald eagle cools off at the Zoo in Madrid Tuesday Aug. 10, 2010.
This image was eliminated from this week's The Week in Pictures (known to the media eds here as TWIP) during the final round of editing.
While the bright, saturated colors, and the really interesting texture of the water hitting the eagle's feathers were engaging, the fact that this photo was from a zoo - a controlled environment - did deplete the editors' initial reaction to the image, and in the end, it didn't make the cut for this engaging week that included: desperate survivors of Pakistan's massive flooding, an eye-tricking image of underwater swimming, a sweet moment of summer love, and more.
Click to see the full slideshow for the week of Aug. 5 - 12 and cast your vote.
Tell us below, which image do you like best this week, and why? Should the bald eagle have made the slideshow?
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