Golden eagle killed in Norway after attack on toddler in farmyard

A young golden eagle has been killed after reportedly attacking and wounding at least four people, including a 20-month-old toddler, in a large area of central and southern Norway.

The public broadcaster NRK said that in the most recent attack on Saturday the bird swooped on the girl, who was was playing in her family’s farmyard in the central Trøndelag region, despite being beaten away by her mother and a neighbour.

“It came out of nowhere and grabbed our youngest daughter,” the toddler’s father, whose name was not disclosed, told the broadcaster. “Her mother jumped up and grabbed hold of it, but had to fight to get it to let go. A neighbour also had to help.”

He said the two adults eventually managed to get the eagle off the girl, who needed stitches and was left with scratchmarks on her face, including under her eye, “but it kept coming back” even though “the neighbour chased it away with a stick”.

Golden eagles, which have a wingspan of up to 2 metres (about 6ft 7in) and are common across much of Scandinavia, generally eat smaller mammals, foxes and sheep. This one “likely had a behavioural disorder”, said Alv Ottar Folkestad, an eagle expert with BirdLife Norge.

Folkestad told the Associated Press that the bird’s behaviour was “radically different from normal”, adding that the series of attacks, which happened over a vast area over the course of the past week, appeared all to have been by the same bird.

“Details in the plumage make me believe it is the same bird,” Folkestad said. Strong high-altitude winds in recent days would have made it relatively easy for the eagle, a female born this year, to fly long distances, he said.

Francis Ari Sture, 31, a bicycle courier, told AP he was attacked at least six times by the bird while he was out hiking last Thursday, despite using his backpack as a shield and pushing the eagle down to his feet so he could kick it away from him.

Sture said he was afraid he would slip because if he fell unconscious, the eagle might “start to eat me”. Doctors at the nearest hospital who treated him for deep gouges to the face said his sunglasses and long-sleeved shirt saved him from worse injuries.

Mariann Myrvang, who was attacked the previous day, told NRK she “cried out for help” when “something big and heavy landed on my shoulders”. She said she was forced to “go down on my knees, because I simply couldn’t stand up”.

Myrvang’s husband grabbed a fallen tree branch and beat the eagle away, she said, but its claws penetrated deep into her flesh and, like the bird’s other targets, she was given penicillin, a tetanus injection and stitches in hospital.

Per Kåre Vinterdal, a game warden in Orkdal, told VG newspaper he had arrived on the scene shortly after the attacks on the toddler on Saturday afternoon and was able to “euthanise” the bird. He did not say how it was killed.