La ultima foto es particularmente cautivante, expresa amor entre hombre y animal, confirmado por la expresión de la pequeña Ashol-Pan que no lo puede ocultar.

1. A 13-year-old eagle huntress in Mongolia
14 April 2014 By William Kremer BBC

2. A photographer who snapped what could be the world's only girl hunting with a
golden eagle says watching her work was an amazing sight.

3. Most children, Asher Svidensky says, are a little intimidated by golden eagles. Kazakh boys in
western Mongolia start learning how to use the huge birds to hunt for foxes and hares at the age of
13, when the eagles sit heavily on their undeveloped arms. Svidensky, a photographer and travel
writer, shot five boys learning the skill - and he also photographed Ashol-Pan.

4. "To see her with the eagle was amazing," he recalls. She was a lot more comfortable with it, a lot more
powerful with it and a lot more at ease with it."
The Kazakhs of the Altai mountain range in western Mongolia are the only people that hunt with
golden eagles, and today there are around 400 practising falconers. Ashol-Pan, the daughter of a
particularly celebrated hunter, may well be the country's only apprentice huntress.

5. They hunt in winter, when the temperatures can drop to -40C (-40F). A hunt begins with days of
trekking on horseback through snow to a mountain or ridge giving an excellent view of prey for miles
around. Hunters generally work in teams. After a fox or hare is spotted, riders charge towards it to
flush it into the open, and an eagle is released. If the eagle fails to make a kill, another is released.

6. The skill of hunting with eagles, Svidensky says, lies in harnessing an unpredictable force of nature. "You don't
really control the eagle. You can try and make her hunt an animal - and then it's a matter of nature. What will
the eagle do? Will she make it? How will you get her back afterwards?"
The eagles are not bred in captivity, but taken from nests at a young age. Female eaglets are chosen since they
grow to a larger size - a large adult might be as heavy as seven kilos, with a wingspan of over 230cm.

7. He describes Ashol-Pan as a
smiling, sweet and shy girl.
His photographs of her
engaging in what has been
a male activity for around
2,000 years, say something
about Mongolia in the 21st
Century.

8. After years of service, on a spring morning, a hunter releases his mature eagle a final time, leaving a
butchered sheep on the mountain as a farewell present. "That's how the Kazakh eagle hunters make
sure that the eagles go back to nature and have their own strong new-borns, for the sake of future
generations", Svidensky says.
"The generation that will decide what will happen with every tradition that Mongolia contains, is this
generation," says Svidensky. "Everything there is going to change and is going to be redefined - and the
possibilities are amazing."