Simon and I were sitting on the carpet of his mum’s lounge. We were twelve years old and had just come back from crawling through the New Forest, watching deer. “Check this out,” he said, selecting a VHS tape from the teetering stack next to the video player. He pressed the play button, and the flickering screen resolved into an image of lush tropical jungle. The tape was a copy of a copy and the colors bled into each other, but I could make out the silhouette of someone climbing a huge tree. The camera zoomed out to show him dangling on a rope at least a hundred feet above-ground. He used mountaineering clamps to slowly inchworm his way up the thin line, and for some strange reason he wore a motorcycle crash helmet. He looked exposed and vulnerable. I could just make out a vast tree canopy looming in the mist high above. Enormous black branches underexposed against a milky-white tropical sky. Each branch was the size of an entire English tree and carpeted in dense forests of shaggy ferns and vines, and the tree trunk that supported this hanging garden was bigger than any I’d ever seen. The tree dwarfed the climber, made him look like a child.
Just as I was wondering what the crash helmet was for, a huge feathered shadow swooped down from the canopy above to punch the climber hard on the shoulder. The force of the impact sent him spinning—arms and legs flailing uselessly in space while he twisted around, frantically trying to see where the next attack would come from. But the enormous bird was gone. In the blink of an eye it melted back into the shadows, and all the man could do was quicken his pace and press on for the sanctuary of the branches high above. A minute later the huge bird struck again, approaching swiftly from behind to wallop him hard on the back of the head. A stunning blow that explained the need for a crash helmet.
Simon was obsessed with birds of prey, a walking encyclopedia of Top Trump bird facts, and I asked him what on earth the bird was. It looked like some sort of massive eagle. “Yep, it’s a harpy eagle,” he replied, and rewound the clip so we could watch it again. “The guy’s climbing up to film its nest, and they are really secretive, aggressive birds,” he explained, and pressed the pause button the instant the eagle next appeared. I shuffled closer to the TV to take a better look at the juddering image on screen. The harpy was in full strike pose, with huge wings fanned out like a cape. Its long legs were held out in front of it, ready to rake the climber with sharp talons. The name suited it well; it looked like some demonic creature of myth and legend. The video was more like a sci-fi movie than a wildlife film. With a huge wingspan, the bird was much bigger than the cameraman it was attacking. But I also gazed in wonder at the colossal tree that towered over man and bird to dominate the entire scene. The film’s narrator told us it was a kapok tree, growing deep in the jungles of Central America, and I could see the eagle’s nest it supported, a huge aerie of branches built in a fork at the top of the kapok’s main stem. There was probably a chick in that nest, which would explain the eagle’s aggression toward any intruder. It was the perfect tree for such an impressive bird to nest in: a living fortress. Totally unscalable without ropes.
Simon pressed play, and the harpy disappeared in a streak, to leave the tiny climber swaying out of control on his rope once more.
The rest of the film revealed the secret life of a harpy’s nest. The cameraman perched inside a hide built in the kapok’s uppermost branches. It was magical. Yes, he’d taken a kicking from the eagle, but the rest of his film stood testament to what a bit of determination and a lot of patience could deliver. To a twelve-year-old already obsessed with trees and wildlife, the film was a revelation.
It would be another few years until I got to climb my first big tree alongside Paddy and Matt in the New Forest, but Simon’s video had planted the seed of an obsession that would slowly shape my life. And with the characteristic naiveté of a twelve-year-old schoolboy, I hoped that one day I’d be lucky enough to meet a harpy while dangling on a rope in the canopy of a kapok.
I walked into camp, slumped down in a chair, cracked open a warm beer, and took the offered cigarette. Adrian was already inhaling deeply from his and I followed suit. It had been quite a morning. The nicotine and alcohol were most welcome, despite the fact that it was barely 10 a.m. and I didn’t smoke. There was blood trickling down my neck, and my ears were ringing. I was soaked with sweat, my back was covered in bruises, and my hands were shaking. We sat in silence, lost in our own thoughts, while trying to piece together the events that had led to this moment. I stared at the tar stain on the end of my cigarette filter while absentmindedly flicking the ring pull on my beer can. I drained it in one, and Adrian silently handed me another. I felt my body relax, and a deep exhaustion crept through me. My bones felt like lead, and I slid off the seat to lie down on my back in the dirt and stare up into the clear blue Venezuelan sky.
What had just happened? My head was reeling, so I stubbed the half-smoked ciggie out in the dust next to me and let my mind rewind to trace the chain of events. Closing my eyes, I took myself back to the day three months earlier when I had first entered this forest. Back to the day I had first stood below the giant kapok tree and squinted up at the harpy nest we had come here to film for the BBC.
Stepping from the sun-blasted open into the cool, dark jungle for the first time had been bliss. Like diving into a cool lake on a hot day. The sounds of the forest had enveloped me, and it took a while to grow accustomed to my new darker surroundings. Every rainforest has a different atmosphere and this one felt particularly full of life from the very moment I set foot in it. Flocks of parrots raced noisily across the early morning sky above. Hummingbirds hovered and dodged among the lush vegetation, and I had just met a long black snake while crossing a stream. It’d come questing toward me through the water, head raised and tongue flicking. I’d stood still to let its sinuous seven-foot-long body pass between my legs on its way downstream, the staccato warnings of birds betraying its location long after I’d lost sight of it among the dark ripples and eddies.
Stepping out of the water, I was faced with a short but steep hill to climb. My rucksack was heavy with ropes, and my boots slipped in the leaf litter. I took my time; my breath was labored and ponderous as my lungs expelled the last of the stale air conditioning inhaled during the long journey to Venezuela from England. Reaching the top of the slope, I took a moment to catch my breath and look around.
The surrounding forest was lush and vibrant. Young saplings grew beneath a dense upper canopy of mature trees. Patches of bright sunlight dappled the forest floor, and backlit cobwebs hung across the path, telling me I was the first person to walk down the trail that morning.
The forest smelled incredible. An earthy aroma of leaf mold laced with delicate citrus scents from unseen flowers. Pockets of different smells hung in the cool air without mingling, so I was greeted by a succession of enticing odors as I walked through the clinging spiderweb silk.
Adrian the producer had told me how to find the harpy tree.
“You can’t miss it; it’s far and away the biggest tree round here,” he’d added, after sketching a map in the dirt as we drank coffee in camp.
Keen to crack on as soon as possible, I had left him sorting a few things and headed into the forest on my own. I was under no illusion about the challenges we were up against, and wouldn’t be able to relax until I’d seen exactly what I had to deal with. Climbing a fully grown kapok tree to install a remote camera within an active harpy nest was an exciting challenge, but not to be taken lightly.
I continued along the trail, turning right at a junction to follow the path along a ridge. A few minutes later I arrived at another junction and followed the trail down a gentle slope to the left. According to Adrian, the kapok was down here somewhere, growing in the lee of the ridge. But I couldn’t see it. I stopped to get my bearings. For a massive tree it was proving pretty elusive.
Looking down the slope into the gloom, I realized that the stand of trees growing close together at the bottom of the hill was in fact one huge tree trunk. The base measured at least thirty feet across, and sunlight and shadow played across its smooth gray bark. My eyes tracked up its colossal stem until it disappeared from view behind other branches in the foreground. Lifting my gaze yet farther, I saw it reappear above the surrounding forest canopy. Only then did the kapok unfurl its giant limbs to stretch out like an enormous parasol and dominate the other trees beneath it. It was one of the broadest, biggest canopies I’d ever seen. It wasn’t the first kapok I’d met, but it was by far the biggest—a real bruiser of a tree. I stood there taking it all in, remembering the first time I’d seen an image of a kapok, twenty-three years ago at Simon’s house. And here I was, at last—about to climb one.
I walked closer. The lower trunk flared out in a wooden avalanche of buttresses. Giant roots seemed to spill over the ground like molten wax before disappearing into the earth. I noticed subtle detail and texture in the bark, horizontal creases following the contours of roots like stretch marks on skin, and patches of mottled green algae revealing where moisture lingered. Several of the buttresses were so tall, sunlight couldn’t penetrate the narrow gaps between them. I gave a root a tap with my boot. Two tiny bats flew up past my face to flit around for a few seconds before tumbling back down to roost. Peering over the root, I saw them hanging upside down from tiny ridges in the bark, chattering excitedly. I put down my rucksack and stepped back to get a proper look up at the rest of the tree.
Its trunk rose straight up for 120 feet before splitting into four giant limbs. These continued on rising, dividing again and again to support the immense canopy. Down at the base I was still standing in morning shadow, but high above me the foliage shone in bright sunlight. Each glowing leaf was the size and shape of an open hand. The foliage was dense but largely confined to the tips of branches. Inside the canopy was an open, airy space crisscrossed by huge gray branches, many of which appeared to be covered with large thornlike spikes. These would add yet another dimension to the climb, and I’d have to rig carefully since they could easily rip through the soft nylon of my ropes. I was still contemplating this new challenge when something higher in the canopy caught my eye, and I glanced up into the unfaltering gaze of an adult female harpy eagle.
She’d been there the whole time, silently watching me as I walked around in the gloom two hundred feet below her. She stood at least three feet tall on her thorny perch, and had a gray, surprisingly owl-like face. Her upper chest was a deep charcoal that contrasted beautifully with the snow-white plumage of her breast. Her enormous folded wings were slate gray and her flanks were barred black and white. But what really drew my attention were her massive legs. They were bright yellow and as thick as my wrists. Her feet were as large as my hands, and each one carried four jet-black murderous-looking claws. I raised my binoculars for a closer look. The two rear talons in particular looked like real killers, each about five inches in length. I guessed she used these thumb talons to kill her prey on impact, driving them forward like knives to puncture the body of a sloth or monkey.
Despite her sublime beauty the harpy eagle was also intimidating. She exuded a palpable aura of power and intent. Having realized that I’d now seen her, she leaned forward to return my gaze and scrutinize me even more closely. Her head bobbed slowly from side to side, and I had no doubt that she was registering every bit of my appearance. Being the object of such focused intent was unnerving, a feeling that increased when she slowly raised the dark feather crest on top of her head. The crest waved gently in the breeze like a headdress, and I had the uncanny impression she knew exactly what I was there to do and was fully prepared to prevent me from doing it.
It’s never a sensible idea to anthropomorphize animals, but in those first few moments I just knew that she could tell I was there to climb her tree. And it was “her tree.” The kapok dominated the forest, but she owned the kapok. This tree was her fortress—her fortaleza, in Spanish—and it was clear to me that she would do anything she could to defend her nest.
This nest itself lay hidden somewhere beneath her. I couldn’t see it, but the manner in which she stole glances at it made it obvious that it contained something important to her. Growing bored with me, she eventually unfolded her dark wings and glided across to the other side of the kapok, where she perched looking out over the forest. It seemed my first audience with a harpy was over.
Walking back up the slope toward the ridge, I searched for an angle from which I could see the nest. I eventually found it cradled between huge limbs at the top of the tree’s main stem, safe from the elements and away from prying eyes. I wondered how such a massive thing could’ve remained so well hidden from the ground. It was ten feet across and five feet deep. Big enough for me to comfortably sleep in. Now that would be a night to remember, I thought, as I headed back up the trail to collect the rest of my climbing gear from camp.
Back outside the forest, everything was shimmering white-hot and painful to look at. Walking back into the shade of camp was a relief. I could hear chatting. Adrian and Graham, the cameraman, were filling their water bottles. They pulled up some chairs, and the three of us sat down around the makeshift kitchen table to discuss our options.
We’d talked it all through so many times already. How to install the nest-cam had been the topic of conversation for days now. First and foremost, above all else, was the need to ensure the absolute safety of the birds. Rigging cameras on nests is an intrusive process, and getting one onto a harpy nest was about as tricky as it got. Every step had to be carefully planned to minimize disturbance. Smashing an egg or harming a chick would be totally unforgivable. As would stressing the parents to the point when their defense of the nest caused them to injure themselves. They could easily snap a talon, buckle a feather, or even break a wing while trying to drive us away. I for one didn’t want a failed harpy nest on my conscience.
We were right to be nervous, but we were also confident that it could be done without causing harm. We just needed to think it through step by step. It was possible that we’d be confronted by the adult birds at some stage. But before we’d even left England we’d agreed that our defense in the face of an attacking eagle must be as passive as possible. Even trying to ward off or deflect a blow could injure the birds.
Our original plan had been to sneak in under the radar and get the camera on the nest without either of the parents noticing. But the female’s behavior that morning had made it obvious that this wasn’t going to happen: she was keeping close tabs on everything that happened in the vicinity of her tree.
From the manner in which she’d been regularly glancing down at something hidden in the nest, it was obvious that either an egg or a chick was up there. Either way, we wouldn’t be able to keep her off the nest for too long. Without Mum there to look after it, any egg or chick would quickly chill or overheat, depending on the time of day. Neither outcome was acceptable, and the clock would start ticking the moment she flushed off the aerie at our approach. I decided to get the ropes up that afternoon, leaving the birds to settle down again before climbing up to install the camera.
I knelt in the leaf litter and pulled the catapult’s thick elastic down as far as I could. I’d mounted the large metal Y-shaped head to the top of a tall wooden pole to give me as much power as possible. The target branch was 140 feet up, well within range, and I wouldn’t normally have needed to pull the elastic back so hard. But it wasn’t a clear shot. The throw-bag had to get through a series of tiny gaps in the foliage, and I needed the catapult’s full power to punch it through any leaves that got in the way. The kapok was in the prime of life, its canopy thick and healthy, with no hanging deadwood. (This lack of deadwood was a great relief. The last thing I wanted was to dislodge something heavy onto the nest.)
I still hadn’t seen the smaller, less aggressive male harpy, but the formidable female was back on her spiky perch above me, shoulders hunched and crest raised. She was balancing on one foot, with the other held up in front of her as she slowly clenched it in obvious irritation. I was glad to see her so clearly, as it meant there was no danger of accidentally hitting her with the catapult. I was more concerned about accidentally hitting the nest. A throw-bag could easily smash an egg or injure a chick. I chose my shooting position very carefully, and from this angle the nest was completely protected by one of the kapok’s giant stems.
I aimed slightly above the target branch, pulled the elastic down the last few inches, slowly breathed out, and released. The bag shot clean through the gaps in the canopy, over the branch, and carried on to finally wrap itself gently around a few leaves in the very top of the tree. It was a good shot. I waited until the bag stopped swinging before pulling it gently back through the leaves to drop it over the big branch.
The harpy glared at the small blue throw-bag the whole time. She glided across to take a closer look at it. Having satisfied her curiosity, she then turned back around to face me again before flying off to a different branch, out of sight.
I hauled the climbing rope up into position. By the time the tree was rigged, the afternoon was getting on and I was keen to give the birds some space. Stashing my kit bags in the leaf litter at the base of the kapok, I turned for camp.
Reaching the ridge, I peered back up at the kapok, which was glowing in the early evening sunlight. Its vast canopy seemed to shine from within. It really was a beautiful tree, rising above the forest like an enormous mushroom. From this shallower angle I could see just how massive the lower limbs were and how much open space there was between them. The birds had chosen their nesting site well; they had a clear view of everything that happened both in the tree’s canopy and around it. There would be nowhere for us to hide once we climbed above the lower canopy.
The following morning I slipped on a heavy Kevlar stab vest over my climbing shirt and did the straps up tight. It was comforting to know it could stop a knife blade, but had it ever been tested against an irate harpy? I pulled on a pair of arm greaves, then bent down to pick up the heavy riot helmet lying at my feet. It was dark blue, with a scratched Perspex visor and a thick padded neck guard. I turned it over in my hands to read the word “Police” in faint letters across the front before putting it on. Its thick foam padding muffled my hearing and destroyed my peripheral vision, so that I had to turn to face anything I wanted to see clearly. I pulled down the visor, which instantly steamed up and heightened the cramping sense of claustrophobia.
We’d brought this secondhand body armor with us from Bristol. Climbing a tree in it wasn’t going to be fun. But it was probably better than being ripped open by an angry eagle. There was still a good chance it wouldn’t come to that, though. Every harpy is different, and this pair might be content to monitor our progress from a distance. But we wouldn’t know for sure until we got up on the ropes, by which time of course it would be too late. Better to be safe than sorry, I thought, remembering that video of Simon’s.
By 5:30 the following morning, Graham, Adrian, and I were standing among the enormous roots at the base of the kapok. Graham was preparing the nest camera while Adrian and I got suited up, ready to climb. Fitting the nest-cam was a one-man job, but four eyes were better than two, so Adrian would climb up with me. Graham would film our progress from a canopy platform in an adjacent tree. He could concentrate on the birds from there and radio through a warning if necessary. This was really important, since it might not be only the female harpy that we’d have to contend with. I hadn’t seen her mate yet, but had no doubt that the male had seen me plenty of times, and we had to assume that both adults were watching us right now.
I peered up at the thin white ropes. They were hanging in open space twenty feet away from the tree trunk. I gave them a gentle shake to free them from snags. A thin veil of mist gave the scene depth and emphasized how high we had to climb. One hundred and fifty feet above us, the first glimmer of sunlight was catching the kapok’s leaves, and above this I could see a pale-blue sky that promised another hot day ahead. Time to get going.
I put the nest-cam in a small bag and hung it from the back of my climbing harness, then clipped myself in to the rope. The riot helmet was stifling. I could already feel my core temperature rising, and I had barely left the ground. The combined weight of the helmet and stab vest was making me top-heavy, pulling me backward, off balance. This, along with the rope’s elasticity, made it hard going and almost impossible to get into an efficient climbing rhythm. I was in a negative space and struggling to get my head right for this climb. It just all felt so wrong. Without being able to see or hear properly, I felt totally disconnected from the tree I was climbing.
But there was nothing for it. Yes, it was going to be tricky, but I reminded myself that no one was forcing me to wear this gear. It had been my own decision, so I might as well get on with it. We had chosen to wear the body armor for good reason, and if we were attacked by the harpies later, then any amount of discomfort now would be worthwhile.
I watched Adrian bouncing up his rope three meters away from me. Our plan was to keep pace with each other, to climb side by side and watch each other’s back. But we were slowly spinning, at the mercy of the ropes’ natural twist, and without peripheral vision I could see Adrian only when he was right in front of me. I would spin, he would appear with his back to me, and then he’d be gone as I carried on spinning.
It was all pretty surreal, and as I climbed upward, my unease increased. We were being watched, and I could tell from Adrian’s body language that he felt it too. Both of us were stopping occasionally to peer around in a vain attempt to see where the birds were.
Fifty feet aboveground we broke through the dense understory foliage to enter the open canopy zone above. However vulnerable I’d felt climbing up was nothing compared to how exposed I felt now. For the next seventy feet we would be dangling without cover, and I was suddenly relieved to be wearing all the gear. The idea of doing this without body protection was verging on suicidal. My heart was racing, and I fully expected to be winded by an unseen attack any second. My imagination was running away with me, so I reined it in and focused simply on climbing the rope.
The tree trunk next to us was still massive, even at this height above the ground. I looked up toward the nest: another forty feet to go. It was almost entirely hidden behind an enormous creeping plant that I now realized with surprise was a huge cheese plant, like a vastly enlarged version of the one my parents used to have at home in the 1970s. So this is where they come from, I thought—how bizarre to see one here.
I was suddenly brought back to my senses by Graham’s voice over the radio: “Look out, she’s coming!”
I twisted my head around just in time to catch a fleeting shadow pass fifteen feet away, on its way out of the kapok. Spinning around, I watched her fly across to perch in the top of a neighboring tree. She ruffled her feathers, raised her crest, and adopted a half-crouching position to watch our every move.
I pushed on toward the kapok’s canopy as quickly as I could. Adrian was a little below me and still very exposed. I looked back at the eagle watching us from a hundred feet away. Suddenly she pitched forward and plummeted silently off the branch. With head hunched between powerful shoulders, she was coming in fast and low, straight toward Adrian.
“Adrian, lower your visor, get ready. Lower your visor!” I shouted.
He flicked the Perspex down but still had his back to the approaching bird. Then at the last moment she veered away with astonishing speed and landed on a branch fifteen feet above us. She glared at us with fierce eyes. Seeing her alongside Adrian had given me a true sense of her incredible size, and both of us had been set swaying on our ropes from the downdraft as she’d put the brakes on to twist away. She had given us fair warning: a shot across the bows. I wondered how she would react when we finally got up to the nest itself.
Keeping a close eye on her, we pushed on as fast as we could. A few minutes later I arrived level with the huge platform of branches and swung across onto its edge. I could now appreciate just how massive the nest really was. It was three meters wide and two deep. Some of the branches were dead, some still had green leaves, but they were all big and heavy. It was an impressive construction, strong enough to take the weight of several people. And there at my feet, nestled deep in a small, bowl-like depression, were two delicate ivory-colored eggs. They were almost round and about the size of goose eggs. So the female harpy was still sitting. The chicks hadn’t hatched. I looked up at her, still close by on the branch above us, and I kept my eyes on her until Adrian came up alongside. She flew back across to the other tree, where she was content to remain while studying us.
This uneasy truce held for the whole time it took me to install the camera. Attaching it to a branch next to the nest was a fiddly process. Once it was done, Adrian headed back down to the ground 140 feet below us. I followed a few minutes later, slowly abseiling down while stopping at intervals to attach the camera’s long power cable to the tree. Halfway down, I felt a movement in the air, but I couldn’t see anything when I twisted around to look.
It was a huge relief to finally arrive back on the ground among the kapok’s huge twisting roots.
“Did you see her?” asked Adrian as I touched down.
I took off my helmet and looked at him. “What do you mean? When?”
“The female harpy. She buzzed you a few minutes ago,” he explained.
“No. No, I didn’t.” The shift in the air I had felt must have been her. An eagle weighing nine kilos with a seven-foot wingspan traveling at fifty miles per hour had passed within three feet of me, and thanks to the bulky helmet, I hadn’t even seen her.
It was a relief to have the camera in position, but I wouldn’t be able to fully relax until we could see an image. Graham joined us and we all crouched around the tiny LCD monitor balanced on a tree root. We turned it on. The screen went blue for one nerve-racking instant before revealing a lovely wide-angle image of the entire nest. On the right-hand side of the frame were two white eggs nestled within their scoop. In the background was a sweeping panorama of the surrounding forest. It looked great.
Adrian and I pulled down the ropes and carried our gear back to camp. Graham joined us there an hour later to report that the female had returned to incubate her eggs within minutes of our leaving the tree. This was great news. So far, so good: our mission had been a success. With luck we would now be able to capture intimate, rare footage of one of the world’s most impressive yet secretive eagles raising its young.
But we were asking a lot of that little camera. Harpy chicks take a long time to fledge—six months, in fact, and that was a very long time for our small nest-cam to stay functioning in such a hot and humid environment. The thought of having to go back up there to fix it didn’t appeal to any of us very much. Once the chicks hatched, their parents really would have something worth defending, and the more they invested in raising them, the more the bond would strengthen, and the more aggressive they would become in the chicks’ defense. But for now everything seemed fine. The camera was working, the birds had handled the disturbance well, and all was going smoothly. With a bit of luck the next time I climbed the kapok would be to de-rig the camera after the chicks had left the nest. Without the need to wear the body armor, I’d have a chance to freely explore this magnificent tree.
It was a nice thought, but somehow, the moment my phone rang with Adrian’s number several months later, I knew instantly that something had gone wrong with the camera.
It seemed like only yesterday that I had last stood at the base of this massive tree. But three months had now passed and a lot had happened since. The nest-cam, though still broadcasting, had completely fogged up and the image was unusable. It needed to be fixed, which meant climbing back up there, onto a nest that was now home to a very large harpy chick. I could see its fuzzy white outline stumbling around like a drunkard in the back of the shot. It was several months old and growing fast on its diet of monkeys and sloths. Its parents were hunting around the clock, bringing food in regularly to meet their offspring’s rapidly growing appetite.
This was the busiest time for a harpy nest, and the parents had invested a lot of time and effort in their chick since it had hatched. They had a lot more to lose this time round, and there was no way they’d sit back and watch me climb into the nest alongside their one and only chick. They were going to react, for sure. But there was no way to predict how extreme this reaction might be until I was actually up there.
So once again I knelt in the leaf litter, took careful aim with the catapult, and released the elastic. The throw-bag flew true, straight over the same branch as before. Dropping the catapult, I made a grab for the thin fishing line accelerating up into the canopy. But just at that moment there was a sharp tug, and the line was ripped out of my hand, taking the skin off my fingers. I looked up to see the female harpy grappling with the throw-bag, trying to carry it away in her talons. She was hanging upside-down from the swinging bag, spinning around with huge wings flapping. There was a real risk of her becoming entangled, so I made another lunge for the line, and for a brief moment we were locked in a tug of war before she let go and dropped away to glide out of the tree. I looked around but couldn’t see her anywhere. She’d arrived like a bolt of lightning, then simply melted back into the forest. Completely vanished. All was still again, and the only sound was the soft patter of lead shot falling on leaves. She had ripped open the thick canvas throw-bag with her talons and left my fingers bleeding.
None of this boded well for how she might react to me once I was up there. I was left in peace to finish the rest of the rigging, but my head was full of doubts and fears. By the time I arrived back in camp I’d decided to make additional body armor. The riot helmet, stab vest, and arm greaves were a comfort, but that still left my lower back and legs exposed. I needed to find some additional padding to protect kidneys and thighs, and I remembered with an air of resignation how much I’d grumbled at wearing just the vest and helmet the first time around. But I had a horrible feeling that this morning’s show of aggression was merely a taste of what lay in store. Tomorrow would come soon enough.
I awoke in the darkness. The night air was filled with the sound of insects, and I could see the faint neon glow of a passing firefly through the thin flysheet of my tent. In the distance the haunting sound of howler monkeys told me that dawn wasn’t far off. I checked my watch: 4:30. Realizing that I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, I pulled on my clothes and wormed my way out into the cool night air. Trees loomed black against a sky filled with stars.
After pulling on my boots, I headed to the kitchen hut to pour myself a strong black coffee from the thermos on the table. I sat there for half an hour, trying to get my head into the game. It was obvious I was going to get attacked by one if not both of the harpies. I could deal with that, I had my armor, and who could blame the birds for defending their nest? It was a price that had to be paid in order to fix the camera. But what really worried me was the thought of accidentally injuring one of the adults during the fray. I’d have to stay as passive as possible and try not to provoke them. But the instinct to defend yourself is hard to suppress and would try my patience. As a last resort, I’d have to know when to retreat if it all got out of hand.
An hour later the three of us were standing together beneath the kapok. Adrian had found some strips of rawhide from somewhere and was taping them around my waist with a roll of gaffer tape. This provided good protection for my lower back, effectively closing the gap between stab vest and climbing harness. I wrapped my thighs in more of the same while Adrian went to help Graham put on similar armor. To minimize disturbance, we had rigged only one set of ropes this time. So I would climb up first, transfer onto a temporary anchor, and free the main ropes for Graham to join me. This would leave me unable to retreat if attacked, but one person could work on the camera while the other kept watch. Getting up there one at a time was going to be a challenge though, since we wouldn’t be able to watch each other’s back during the climb.
The riot helmet smelled of mold and rancid sweat. I pulled it on and did up the chinstrap. I clipped the rope into my climbing clamps, then pulled the slack through. With my radio firmly attached and switched on, I began to climb. There was no sign of the birds, but they would be watching.
The riot helmet’s narrow field of view kept me blinkered, and its heavy padding muffled all sound. My breathing was loud and labored, but everything else was clipped and distant as if underwater. Unable to see or hear much, I concentrated on the rhythm of climbing. Arriving at the top of the dense understory, I pulled down my visor in preparation for breaking cover. The scratched Perspex instantly steamed up, leaving me blind as I wriggled my way up through the tangle of branches.
I entered the open space above, and it would now be only a matter of time until the eagles spotted me. The race to reach the protective canopy seventy feet overhead had begun, and until I got there, I was fair game. Sweat trickled into my eyes, stinging like acid, and my muscles burned. I drove myself up the rope as fast as possible.
The first warning was an ominous shadow barreling down fast from the left. With head hunkered low between her wings, the female harpy presented a streamlined profile until she got to within ten feet of my face. Then she pushed her enormous talons forward to attack. But realizing I’d seen her, she veered away at the last second. The rush of air from her immense wings sent me swinging on the rope, and my back was now toward her. Climbing blind again, I continued my dash upward as fast as possible, my heart pounding loud in my ears.
Within seconds the radio crackled to life: “Watch it, she’s coming back in.” By the time I’d twisted around she was a hundred feet away, powering toward me with deep strokes of her huge black wings. She was accelerating with terrifying speed. All I could do was watch her get bigger and bigger as she came in hard and fast straight toward my face. Thirty feet away she fixed her wings into a rigid glide and twisted to one side at the last instant to kick me hard in the kidneys with both feet as she shot past like a missile. The makeshift armor worked. Her talons didn’t penetrate, but she’d delivered a powerful punch that left me bruised and spinning on the rope. There was nothing to do but press on with climbing at full speed.
Swaying around all over the place, I could feel myself spiraling up the rope in dizzying circles. The heat, sweat, and blindness left me feeling sick. I flipped up the visor to take a breath, only to see her rushing in toward my face no more than twenty feet away. The twist in the rope spun me around again, there was a whoosh of air and a heavy impact—this time she got me square in the middle of the back. I caught a fleeting glimpse of her broad, rounded wings and huge fanned tail as she scythed away, with those enormous talons dangling like knives beneath her.
A few minutes later she reappeared above me, landing on a branch next to my ropes. There was no clear flight path between us, so I took the opportunity to push myself up as fast as my burning muscles would allow. I was approaching the top of my rope and had now entered the kapok’s canopy. The harpy was right there, leaning toward me, her black eyes staring me down and her giant hooked beak open to reveal a reptilian tongue panting in time with her rapid breathing.
Her powerful yellow feet gripped the branch hard, those formidable rear talons resting on their needle-sharp points. It was obvious she was waiting for another chance to attack. Without taking my eyes off hers, I squeezed myself up through a tight fork in the branches, then balanced precariously to stare up at her. After a minute or so she seemed to relax a bit and sat up straight with her crest raised.
Now came the tricky bit. In order for me to free the ropes for Graham’s ascent, I needed to rig another anchor. I’d have to take my eyes off the harpy for a few seconds to do that. There was no choice but to give her the benefit of the doubt, in the hope that she wouldn’t press home the advantage.
The next thing I knew I was spinning on my rope, seeing stars. My ears were ringing, and I could feel a searing pain at the base of my skull. I scrambled back onto the spike-covered branch as quickly as possible and placed my hand on the pain. The left-hand side of my neck between collar and jaw was numb, and when I took my hand away there was blood on my fingers. She must have seen the gap between neck guard and stab vest, and gone for it. I felt like I’d been hit with a baseball bat, and I turned my head a few times to check that there were no broken bones. But blood wasn’t good, and I tried to stem the flow by pressing hard with my fingers, which only made me feel more lightheaded and giddy.
I shouted down to the guys: “I’m okay, but that’s it—I’ve had enough. I’m out of here!”
Graham’s voice drifted up to me from far below: “Stay there, James. I’m on my way. I’m coming up to you!” I just had time to disconnect and attach to the neighboring branch before I felt the climbing rope below me begin to stretch and bounce. He was on his way.
But seconds later the harpy flew at me again, stooping fast, with talons stretched out toward my face. This time it didn’t seem that merely turning to face her was going to deter the attack, so I shouted and waved my arms. She swerved and veered to land on a branch ten feet away, where she leaned forward to study me again, with wings half-cocked, ready for action if the opportunity arose. To turn my back on her now or look away momentarily would clearly invite another attack. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. So while she craned her neck to get a clear view of me, I did my best to maintain eye contact while using an adjacent branch for cover. We were at an impasse—our eyes locked. This was her home turf and I was the outsider.
Risking a quick glance down the ropes, I saw Graham just emerging from the understory. The harpy must have noticed him as well, because she leaned a little farther forward to peer down. Just when I thought she was going to swoop down on Graham, the male harpy appeared out of nowhere and came arcing in beneath me toward him. I raised the alarm, but Graham had already seen him and lifted his feet up in front of his body to ward off a blow. The eagle realized he’d been rumbled and banked off to the side at the last second, to leave Graham swinging. Graham pressed on up the rope regardless, and within a few minutes arrived next to me on the branch. I had collected my nerves a bit, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. So with Graham keeping a close eye on the female only feet away, I had my first opportunity to take a proper look at the nest behind us.
Where three months ago there had been two small white eggs nestled in a delicate bowl, there was now one big angry chick. It was the size of a large chicken, with gray wings, a white head, and two enormous yellow feet. It was leaning back on its haunches, talons raised toward me. Its beak was open in defiance, and every few seconds a pale nictitating membrane slid in a cold reptilian fashion across its fierce dark eyes.
The surface of the nest was covered in a thick layer of leaf litter and strewn with the dismembered remains of half-eaten carcasses. Bloated green flies swarmed over mangled flesh, and pale rotting meat seethed with maggots. The chick edged back away from us. We had to be careful not to scare it out of the nest, so I went only as far as I needed in order to reach the camera. Graham and I spent the next thirty minutes cleaning the splattered eagle dung from its lens and wiping away three months of accumulated grime. By the time we’d finished, the chick seemed surprisingly relaxed with our presence, but a quick look back over my shoulder at its mother was enough to remind me not to get complacent. She and Graham were eyeballing each other, and the truce was holding—just. But I knew that in a moment one of us would have to abseil back down, leaving the other here to deal with the harpy on his own. I offered to stay, and watched Graham lean back off the branch, then drop into the void, to be swallowed by the thick understory vegetation seventy feet below. She remained perched, glaring at me, and Graham escaped unscathed.
Now it was my turn, and I knew what was coming. I fixed her with a stare and jumped off the branch while cranking the handle of my abseil device as hard as I dared, but there was no avoiding it: with wings tucked in beside her, she swooped straight down on top of me and swerved around to strike me one last time in the shoulder before disappearing into the forest. I’d well and truly had enough, and dropped like a stone down the rope to the safety of the forest floor.
“Mate, your neck’s bleeding,” said Adrian, once I’d landed and discarded the riot helmet. “Looks pretty bad . . .” He came close to take a proper look. “The collar of your shirt’s all ripped up, there’s a slice in the neck guard, and it looks like she got a talon right down into your neck next to your jugular. Yep, a bit to the left, and you’d be in trouble.” She’d made a deep puncture wound with one of her talons. Who knew what bacteria live on the claws of a harpy? It was going to need a proper scrape-out and clean, but at least the bleeding had stopped.
We gathered round the small LCD monitor to look at the image of the chick sitting on the nest, sulking at the camera.
A few minutes later the mother bird landed back in shot. She stood motionless, staring at her chick. Then she dragged a scrap of monkey carcass toward it and with short, sharp tugs began tearing off small strips of meat with her beak. She leaned forward to offer the scrap to the chick, which came shuffling toward her with wings flapping weakly. With infinite tenderness the mother delicately placed the tiny morsel into the chick’s waiting mouth. It was a fantastic sight, and we couldn’t have asked for better proof that all had gone well and we hadn’t caused any lasting disturbance.
I looked up at the huge silver branches shining in the sunlight high above. It was a different world up there in the harpy’s fortress. What a privilege it was to have visited it.
“Let’s get back to camp. We’ve got to clean that wound out,” said Graham. I didn’t need telling twice. It was only 9:30 in the morning, but I really needed a beer.