HARPY EAGLE

Currently, a good friend and colleague, Santiago Gilbert, is immersed in a fascinating quest: to photograph a harpy eagle in Mexico, deep in the Lacandon rainforest. I share his passion for birds of prey, and in this particular case, documenting this magnificent bird would mark the northernmost photographic record of its distribution on the continent.
Santiago and I are working together on a book of historical photographs of Mexican wildlife. He showed me an old black-and-white image of a dead harpy eagle taken in Veracruz. Historically, this formidable eagle once inhabited the tropical forests of that region.
I’ve made several trips to the Lacandon rainforest, including two expeditions rafting down the rapids of the San José Canyon on the Usumacinta River, where harpy eagles were reported some years ago. Despite my efforts, I never had the chance to see one in Mexico.
It was thanks to a trip to the Cuiabá River in Brazil, where I was photographing jaguars, that I met Brazilian photographer João Marcos Rosa. Each of us was in a separate boat, facing a jaguar napping by the riverbank. That moment sparked a lasting friendship, and thanks to it, João invited me to document several harpy eagle nests in the Amazon rainforest — where he has been working for several years documenting the species. It was an incredible gesture on his part, one for which I will always be grateful.
During that brief but extraordinary trip, we observed six different harpy eagles. The experience of seeing and photographing one of the largest and most powerful raptors on the planet remains one of the most unforgettable moments of my life.