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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Khisanth the Ancient" data-source="post: 7697075" data-attributes="member: 11368">Googling it, average speed for a Golden Eagle is like 30 mph.  They are very fast in short bursts, but that's not endurance flying. Also, these guys are mostly soarers, so that means exploiting air currents, so not necessarily straight-line.Not long. Given that one was able to carry Gandalf (man-sized) up into mountains, they must be huge, perhaps the size of large pterosaurs. Large objects in open sky are incredibly visible, and Sauron's magic red eye thing is presumably far better than human vision, or what would be the point?I wouldn't be willing to risk flying high anywhere where the curvature of the planet didn't block sight lines to Mordor.EDIT: Doesn't matter. He has no reason not to kill Great Eagles (enemies) on general principles.They're capable of it, but that sounds way less efficient than soaring. How long per day are they going to be able to do it? It would take forever if you could only do it five or ten miles at a time... probably not any faster than horses.EDIT: I'd accept that it might have been a reasonable trade-off of risks to use the eagles to bypass the Misty Mountains (and thus Caradhras/Moria). But not much closer to Mordor than that.</blockquote>