Since Eagles share very much the same lifestyle and habitat as the Osprey, these two are often in conflict. They will raid each other’s nest’s, taking the babies of the other. The Eagle often attacks Ospreys in mid-flight to steal his hard earned fish, so Ospreys take advantage of every opportunity to harass Eagles in return. Neither wants to share prime fishing areas with the other.
Eagles are also a danger to each other, particularly when territory is in dispute. Their mid-air battles can be vicious. Quite often two Eagles will lock talons in the air and essentially play “chicken” before they spiral down and hit the Earth. It’s not unusual to have neither give up their death grip, and they both hit the trees or the ground together, sometimes resulting in one or both breaking a wing.
Finally… the masked bandit himself. Raccoons are likely the biggest non-avian predators of Eagles. With their expert tree-climbing ability, they can get to an Eagle’s nest and devour either eggs or even fairly large juvenile eaglets. You would think that an adult Eagle could easily take on a Raccoon, but that’s not always the case. They can be closely matched, and more than one Eagle mama has come back home to find her family gone.
There is one more natural deadly issue that Eagle face. Avian cholera and another highly infectious bacterial disease - erysipelas - is sometimes a problem which has led biologists to theorize that afflicted Eagles contract one of the two diseases by feeding on infected ducks, which were themselves infected by a certain bacteria that grows on the underside of floating water plants like duckweed, under certain conditions. Some of the biggest Eagle die-offs have been attributed to this.
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