Flying with the eagles

Name: Codi
Price range: $

Kunanyi - Mount Wellington

Here in Tasmania we now have quite a few wedge tail eagles, and unsurprisingly the places we play, they like playing too. The thermals give them the range to go wherever they want to, so you just sit in thermals with the eagles. It's wonderful.

A lot of the time they'll just fly alongside you and you can be in a thermal with an eagle going up, but sometimes they just want to show you they’re boss and they'll just swoop in and strike the top of the wing and make a hole and then you start to feel a little like, "Oh well, I'll get out of here. You are the boss!".

I have holes in the top of my wing made by wedgetail eagles.

We hang underneath the [paragliding] wing, so they tend to circle at about the same level as the wing, rather than at eye level. They don't see us as people or creatures. In fact, somebody suggested that the eagles were trying to do us a favor, because they saw us as bits of prey that were dangling under the wing and they were just trying to get us released. But no, they're just nice to play with. Good fun. They are beautiful from above when you're flying above them and you see the patterns of their wings.