Golden Eagle (Photo by Jessie Cohen)
Glimpsing of a pair of golden eagles as they soar high above the red and purple rock formations of the canyons of southwestern U.S., watching them spiral higher and higher with wide-spread wings on currents of warm air, is a sight that captures the quintessential magnificence of the American West. The vast, open spaces, refuges of solitude and quiet, still remain unsubdued by the will of the human species.
For me, as director of the Smithsonian's National Zoo, the golden eagle has a special significance: not only was it one of the animals in our collection when the Zoo was established in 1889, but it was also exhibited on the Mall behind the Smithsonian's Castle here in Washington in a menagerie that predated the Zoo's existence. And in this there is a story.
Back in 1887 William Hornaday, the chief taxidermist at the National Museum, the forerunner of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, was asked to undertake a journey to the Pacific Coast. He was instructed to obtain, either as gifts or at a small cost, specimens of living mammals and bring them back to Washington for exhibition. Hornaday accompanied U.S. Fish Commission Car Number 1--the first of ten railroad cars commissioned to transport live shad fry destined to restock streams and rivers along the Pacific Coast. That first car, coupled on to a train heading west, carried 888 buckets of shad fry, raised in ponds not far from the Castle, near the Washington Monument. When Hornaday headed back East on his return trip, his railroad car housed 15 animals. Among them were a bear, three deer, two foxes, five prairie dogs, and two badgers, and a golden eagle, that he had acquired in Salt Lake City.
Once back in Washington, a temporary shelter for the animals was built on the Mall adjacent to the east wing of the Castle. The day before the collection opened to an enthusiastic public, President Grover Cleveland presented the Smithsonian with a second golden eagle. The National Museum's collection of living animals was tremendously popular with the public and soon led to the creation of the National Zoological Park in 1889. Our accession records from 1890, the year that the Zoo moved to its present location adjoining Rock Creek Park in northwest Washington, show that a golden eagle was among the 61 birds brought here from the Mall.
This eagle was once found throughout temperate regions of both the New and Old World, from North America, Scandinavia, Central Europe and the Middle East, eastward into Russia and Siberia. Sadly, in the years since the National Zoo was established, the golden eagle's population has decreased throughout much of its former range. Habitat destruction has reduced its territory and food supply. Sportsmen hunted it because it competes with them for game and farmers, overlooking the vast quantities of rodents and other farm pests consumed by the eagle, killed it because they thought it preyed upon farm animals.
Yet, the golden eagle's reputation has been woven into the fabric of the lives of many of the peoples living throughout this bird's range. It appears in the Bible, in Iroquois dances performed at war and peace ceremonies, and in Norwegian folk tales. In medieval Europe, this powerful raptor became a symbot of nobility, and in falconry its use was reserved strictly for the king or emperor. Even today, the golden eagle is still revered in Mexico, where it has been designated the national bird.