I was about to climb nearly 50m up a tree and I was having second thoughts, says James Aldred. My mission was to adjust a remote camera installed a few months earlier in a harpy eagle nest for a Natural World film.
Back then, the female had shown little interest in us, being content to watch from a perch 100m away. But this time I knew that things would be different. The egg had hatched, and the chick was now three months old. Mum - huge bird weighing in at kg and standing cm tall - would protect it ferociously.
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The aggression and hunting ability of harpy eagles are legendary. Silent in flight, they use their extraordinary cunning and stealth to ambush large prey such as monkeys in the canopy. Hitting them hard with razor-sharp talons, they kill on impact.
And now I was beginning to wonder exactly how the harpy mother was going to react to the giant monkey that was about to pay her nest an unwanted visit.
Still, we had some tricks up our sleeves.
I was wearing a police riot helmet and stab vest that producer Adrian Seymour had brought out from the UK, and we had improved the protection with some rawhide leather strips. I looked like a medieval spaceman.
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Though it was early in the morning, the Imataca Forest was already hot and humid, and I was beginning to boil inside my armour. My breathing was loud in my ears, the visor kept steaming up and I had lost all peripheral vision.
Swarming up the ropes, I broke out of the protective understorey.
For the next 15m, until I reached the upper canopy, I would be completely exposed to attack by the female eagle from almost any direction.
Having no idea where she was, I decided to make a dash for it. Suddenly she appeared, barrelling down at me from the left. With immense broad wings and her hunkered down low between her shoulders, she presented a compact, streamlined profile until she got within a few metres of my face, when she raised her talons to strike. At the last instant she realised I had seen her and veered away.
I continued climbing as fast as I dared. Immediately, the eagle swooped in again, this time from behind, twisting to one side to hit me in the kidneys with both feet as she ricocheted past.
The armour worked well: despite a heavy impact, there was no real damage. she zoomed in to rake my back a second time, and I was amazed at how quiet she was – no rush of wings; no shrieking. Spinning on the rope like a spider on a thread, I had no choice but to keep hiding for the shelter of the canopy.
The next time I saw the furious harpy, she was perched about 7m above me. I needed to clamber up onto the nest-cam branch, which involved turning my back on her for a moment. Before I knew what was happening, I was seeing stars and my ears were ringing.
As I'd turned, she had spotted the gap in my armour between the stab vest and neck guard - and seized her chance. The blow was unbelievably powerful, like being hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat. To make matters worse, one of her talons had pierced my neck, leaving it numb and bleeding.
Enough was enough. I prepared to abseil down. I didn't want a I2cm talon puncturing my neck vertebrae, which might happen if she attacked at such close quarters again.
Luckily, rescue was on its way. Cameraman Graham Hatherley was climbing up to join me, and though the harpy seemed intent on giving him a hard time, too, the combination of us both was enough to deter more serious attacks. After a couple more stoops, she settled down to watch as we worked on the nest-cam. The job finished, all we had to do was get back down again...
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