Edward the male Scottish Golden Eagle taught me the true spirit of a Golden Eagle. Edward was given to me by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland in 1989. They had kindly decided that Edward may be a useful addition to my attempts to bred from my female hunting eagle Maria using voluntary artificial insemination.

Edward had been housed for most of his life at their Highland Wildlife Park at Kingussie Inverness-Shire. He had come from the wild as a downey eaglet in 1973 and had been introduced to a number of different female eagles both at the Highland Park and at the Zoological headquarters at Edinburgh.

Edward came to me to be used as a breeding eagle but I had insisted that I was able to fly him, as this was the only way I had developed a pair bond with my previous eagles.
I learnt a lot when training a seventeen year old eagle who had never flown in any real wind. It was like starting with the very first flight from the eyrie. What impressed me from the start was Edward's hunting zeal, the very first hare he ever saw in full flight his reaction was pursuit. It took months and months of training flights to get him in any condition to even scare a brown hare. He put in some really plucky flights and we both had a great deal of enjoyment.
Edward started to preen my hair within two weeks of coming to live at the farm and after a number of years he finally gave me the semen that produced G’Kar.