00:00Three chicks, high on a ledge, and no parent in sight.
00:03Something has already seen them.
00:06The adults are hunting far down the valley.
00:12A young ibex, caught in the open.
00:18It is not the meal that matters, it is the time it will cost them.
00:27Every minute they spend down here is a minute the ledge stands undefended, and he is already climbing.
00:36A snow leopard can move up a vertical rock face faster than a man walks across level ground.
00:45He has been watching that nest for days.
00:49The chicks cannot fly.
00:51They cannot hide.
00:52They have nowhere in the world to go.
01:00He is close enough now to hear them.
01:05And still the adults hunt, three valleys away and a thousand meters below.
01:25The chicks fall silent.
01:27Something in them understands.
01:30Sixty seconds, that is the margin between a family surviving this morning and losing everything.
01:37He comes over the lip of the ledge.
01:41And the sky opens behind him.
01:47Seven kilos of eagle, at full speed, into the back of a predator, four times its weight.
02:06It is not strength that wins this.
02:08It is nerve.
02:12Neither of them will stop.
02:18the second adult arrives now he is fighting on two fronts on a ledge with no room to turn
02:28they do not need to hurt him they only need to make this cliff unbearable
02:32and it is working
02:44he backs into a crevice for a moment he is safe
02:53but they will not leave and he cannot stay
02:58and so he runs
