Take one of the most magnificent birds on the planet and combine it with one of the worlds best mints and you have a recipe for a fine looking coin. The Royal Canadian Mint have released a new nature set featuring a portrait view of the Bald Eagle. Each of the four coins in the set carries the same design and is struck in their usual 0.9999 fine silver in a range of sizes from 1/10 zo up to 1 oz in weight. Presented in a quality wooden box.

It’s a ccol enough looking piece of art, but we’re not huge fans of fractional sets all carrying the same design, especially silver ones. We’d love to see an ultra high relief version of this coin in the Perth Mint style. The RCM has done a fantastic job previously with a wonderful looking Lynx coin, so maybe they’ll do the same again here. At $200, it’s about the going rate for sets of this sort, so not one for the bargain hunter, but we can’t see many being disappointed with this one. Available to order now.

The bird above is a juvenile Bald Eagle I saw this weekend at the London Pet Show. Despite it’s young age, this stunning animal stood well over 80cm tall and was totally at ease with the attention. It was from a bird of prey sanctuary, and wasn’t a pet.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

The amazing bald eagle—Haliaeetus leucocephalus—is Canada’s largest bird of prey and the only eagle exclusive to North America. An apex predator with no natural enemies, the bald eagle has long been a potent symbol of vision, power, and stoicism. The adult boasts a wing span of more than 2 metres, a standing height of about 1 metre, and an average weight of up to 7 kilograms.

Females are generally larger than males. The renowned raptor is noted for its distinctive dark-feathered body and white-feathered head, large golden eyes, bright yellow beak, and massive yellow claws armed with sharp, powerful talons. This long-lived bird can survive nearly 30 years in the wild and even longer in captivity. Nesting in tall trees near large bodies of water and well away from human habitation, bald eagles survive on a diet of fish, birds, invertebrates, and small mammals, but are opportunistic feeders who will also steal from other predators and eat carrion.

DESIGN: The reverse image was designed by award-winning artist Derek C. Wicks, who was twice named the National Artist of the Year by Ducks Unlimited.

PACKAGING: The set is encapsulated and presented in a Royal Canadian Mint-branded maple wood case with a graphic beauty box.

BALD EAGLE

The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus, from Greek hali “sea”, aiētos “eagle”, leuco “white”, cephalos “head”) is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known sub-species and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla). Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting.

The bald eagle is an opportunistic feeder which subsists mainly on fish, which it swoops down and snatches from the water with its talons. It builds the largest nest of any North American bird and the largest tree nests ever recorded for any animal species, up to 4 m (13 ft) deep, 2.5 m (8.2 ft) wide, and 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) in weight. Sexual maturity is attained at the age of four to five years.

Bald eagles are not actually bald; the name derives from an older meaning of “white headed”. The adult is mainly brown with a white head and tail. The sexes are identical in plumage, but females are about 25 percent larger than males. The beak is large and hooked. The plumage of the immature is brown.

The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States of America. The bald eagle appears on its Seal. In the late 20th century it was on the brink of extirpation in the continental United States. Populations recovered and the species was removed from the U.S. federal government’s list of endangered species on July 12, 1995 and transferred to the list of threatened species. It was removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in the Lower 48 States on June 28, 2007.

(Source: Wikipedia)