Just when you thought the selfie stick was finally phasing out…
Inventions are supposed to help make life better, and one that really swung and missed (with a certain population) is the selfie stick. Now you are seeing places ban them from even being used, which has essentially cut down on the selfie stick phenomenon.
Only the worst type of people were using them for the most part. That is until this golden eagle had one fastened on to its body by its handler to get some breathtaking aerial footage of a German castle. We’ve all heard the term “bird’s eye view” being used, but you’ve never seen it like this before.
Who knows if the golden eagle was really “cool” with this happening, but if it was, then I’ll give the selfie stick a pass just this one time. The footage that the camera manages to capture while suspended just to the right of the eagle’s head is remarkable.
The short clip is titled “POV: An Eagle Steals Your Camera,” and though it does appear that could have happened (and would be hilarious if it did), the video is actually a controlled situation put on by a falconer. A separate video below this short clip will explain how Paul Klima, a master of falconry for nearly 40 years, finally planned out this magnificent shot.
In the footage, the golden eagle screeches as it soars down the mountainside and just atop the dense trees below. The audio allows viewers to hear the air rushing by the big bird as it flies into the valley, revealing a medieval looking castle off in the distance.
The literal bird’s eye view also shows the beautiful landscape located between the mountains, as well as a stream of running water far below the sky that the eagle is flying in.
Take a look:
I could watch that all day…
Paul Klima, a falconer in Bavaria, has worked with large birds for 38 years. The man has dedicated his whole life to the art of falconry, and one thing he always wanted to do was utilize a bird to get aerial footage of the Castle Neuschwanstein (thank God I just have to type that and not say it out loud).
The beautiful manor belonged at one point to King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria, and now acts as a tourist destination tucked away in the Alps of southern Germany. Klima thought there would be no better way to capture the magical castle (I guess he’s anti-drone?) than to hook up a trained eagle with a small, high-definition camera.
He had tried to do it four years earlier, but the technology of the smaller cameras was not up to the high visual standard that he holds for the shot. Klima waited technology out and finally got these shots back in 2022. In the clip below, you’ll see two different shots of the golden eagle’s flight.
One is like the video you saw above, where the camera is pointed towards the bird’s head, while the other is mounted right on its back, giving a front-on golden eagle point of view of the flight through the Alps. Paul also discusses his passion for falconry, and how happy he was to finally pull off this video of the Castle Neuschwanstein (you skipped the name of it when you read it, didn’t you?).
Take a look:
