Gwaihir in the Hobbit?

[lindil]

Assuming I am not forgetting any evidence I would try and [somewhat artificially] reconcile the passages thusly:

It was certainly the Lord of the Eagles who picked up Gandalf, but that it was either Gwaihir's sire or Gandalf was speaking loosely or only of very recent events with his 'twice you have borne me'.

After all the previous bearing of gandalf was what 70 or 80 years previous?

As for THe Eagles as maia's

The Silm quote [taken from I believe a text more fully presented in HoMEXI] does strongly suggest a Maia origin.

But we never have a race of Maia settling in Middle-Earth and pre-creating generation after generation. Melian is the only exception to the a-procreative Maia/Valar rule, and her descendants were quickly absorbed into the general Atan/Quendi population, bereft of nearly all attributes of divinity except those belonging to [Dun]Edain anmd Eldarin nobility.

The HoM-EX quote provided by Nils definetly showed JRRT was having doubts, but as is virtually everything in the Myth's Transformed section of X, much is torn down, but little is offered in the way of a stable replacment structure. The Orcish Fea question is another such example.

Personally I find the idea of Huan as simple Narnia like talking dog to fail to do Huan justice. But that's just me...