Come one, come all! Feast your eyes upon the most spectacular, the most amazing, the most stunning display of gravity-defying aerial mastery you’ve ever seen: the golden eagle's sky dance! (Ringmasters, come at me).
In all seriousness, this incredible clip, posted to Facebook by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, shows a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in Utah performing what is in fact called a "sky dance". The footage was shared by the team behind the new Raptor ID app.
These aptly named eagles perform the circular manoeuvre both to mark their territory and as a courtship display (who wouldn’t love those moves?).
Because of their mastery of the skies and fierce hunting prowess, golden eagles have been a favourite bird of prey in falconry for thousands of years. Among the most best known raptors in the Northern Hemisphere, they're also some of the fastest. In a straight dive, the birds can clock speeds upwards of 200 miles (322km) per hour!
While they typically eat hares, ground squirrels and other small mammals, the opportunistic hunters have also been known to attack a goat-antelope or two:
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Top header image: H2O Alchemist/Flickr
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