Inspired by Kestrel’s story last week of her amazing encounter with the young Peregrine Falcon, I thought it would be fun to share a couple of peak moments when I’ve been lucky enough to cross paths with eagles in my neighborhood.
There are many things we explore about birds here at the Dawn Chorus and one of my favorites is what we see them doing. Behavior is a window into the minds of creatures. Usually the descriptions in guide books are dry recitations of size and color and number of eggs and such, but there’s so much more. Birds and other critters are not robots — they are thinking, reacting beings with individual personalities. We just don’t usually have a chance to see that in our brief observations, and when they all look alike in our human-centric perception. But an unexpected moment gives an insight into their minds at work. I hope we’ll have more Dawn Choruses exploring that. Many of us have photo archives going way back, and that’s a good resource to share. I’ve dredged up a couple of sets of photos for today.
Bald Eagles are the most visible raptors where I live in the Salish Sea islands. I love all our raptors but I see the others less often — Redtailed hawk, Osprey, Turkey vulture, Northern Harrier, Sharp-shinned, Cooper’s hawks, Peregrine falcon and Merlin are more intermittent, seasonal or elusive. Bald eagles are so abundant in the Salish Sea it’s a rare day I don’t see one.
They are glorious though — I never take a sighting for granted. When an eagle appears, or if I hear that delicate piercing call, I’ll always stop what I’m doing (if not in a car!) and look up.
Sometimes they’re just perched on a tree or rock, as one adult was on an occasion when some river otters decided to use it too (this was in October 2012, me with my inexpensive compact digital camera, all I had at the time, so not great quality pics). This was a little gang of otters, most likely youngsters, who frequented this bay for its plentiful crabs and fish.
Eagles typically sit quietly with a thousand-yard stare:
Then the first of these otters climbed up onto the rock directly in front of the eagle.
That’s all it was, a very quick encounter which I luckily happened to be there to see. But utterly (otterly?) delightful.
Another quick encounter at this same rock was between two eagles. I was in a kayak on the far side, looking toward shore. I actually wrote it up as a Daily Bucket back in June 2014 but with the total purge of all pre-2016 photos at the image library, that diary is now pictureless. 😔
So here it is with photos imported from Flickr, reconstructed as best I can figure. I called it A Tangle of Eagles. You see why.
June 26, 2014
Salish Sea
Pacific Northwest
I go outside every day to see what's happening in nature. Usually the natural world appears pretty quiet, or "uneventful", because the drama is subtle or unfolding slowly or tiny and hidden from me. But sometimes things like this happen.
What I saw, managed to photograph and possible explanation below the fold…
My resident pair of Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) have been very scarce since spring until this last week. Now they're back - flying together, fishing in the bay, perching on tall firs on the several local headlands, flying from one bay to another. Really great seeing them again, most every day, and hearing them calling.
It's likely they've been preoccupied with nesting, although I can't know whether they did this year and I don't know where their nest is. In Washington, eagles lay their eggs in mid-March. Hatching occurs toward the end of April and the eaglets fledge in early to mid-July. Several juveniles live in the area here, and I've seen subadults occasionally too. These all may be eaglets raised in previous seasons, since young eagles don't go too far from where they were born. Eagles are on their own by the fall of their first year, and they will be driven away from the parents' nest if they get too close, just like intruding ravens, gulls, crows and hawks. But I've read that the adult pair is more tolerant of immature eagles in their territory than other adults.
On this day, I was floating in my kayak watching the adults and one youngster fishing in the bay, swooping down onto the surface and making grabs, sometimes successfully. It's an incredible sight, seeing these huge graceful powerful beautiful birds so close.
Then another adult eagle glided into the bay from the east, scoping out the action. Instantly, one of the resident adults flew up at it, screeching, and attacked.
All this happened in 3 seconds, according to the time stamps on my photos. The two plummeted straight down behind a small island, out of my view.
In a moment, one eagle flew off west, the other up to a nearby fir. Both were apparently unhurt by the altercation.
Early in the mating season courting pairs of eagles will tangle and drop from a great height (sometimes called "cartwheeling"). That's not what this was. It appears to be an attack by the resident eagle, defending its nest territory against an intruder.
Such moments remind me how every day is a matter of survival for wildlife. We humans take so much for granted in our lives.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about what might be going on in either of these incidents. And it would also be wonderful to hear about unexpected bird encounters you've had, either in a comment or hosting a Dawn Chorus. I encourage readers to take a look through your photo archive. Very likely you have sets of photos documenting unexpected moments. Such lucky encounters enrich our understanding of the wildlife we share a world with.
What’s up in your birdy world this week?