In Alaska eagles may lay eggs as early as late March or early April. This is always preceded by a courtship, which includes some breathtaking aerial acrobatics and which may continue trough the entire nesting season. The female usually lays two and rarely three large, smooth eggs. Research suggests that egglaying in the Interior is higher when population cycles of snowshoe hare and willow ptarmigan are high. Eggs hatch in 35 days.
Golden eagles are shy and wary of man.
The female might even desert an egg-filled nest if it is molested, but she will not desert the young. The hatchlings are covered with thick, white down to keep them warm. Down is replaced with feathers at eight weeks and by 11 or 12 weeks the young are nearly full grown and are practicing flapping their wings and hanging suspended by the wind for increasingly long periods of time. After a few days' practice, if they don't take wing, the mother may actually push them from the nest, forcing them to fly. Even after they learn to fly and feed themselves the nest is the center of activity until fall, when the young venture farther and farther until one day they simply don't return.