From here to the west of us as far as I can see every herring gull has taken to the air. Only one thing does that.
“Valerie! Eagle!”
She comes running and we stand on the porch, passing the good binoculars back and forth, straining our eyes.
Nothing.
“Are you sure?” She says.
“They’re sure,” I say.
The gulls can see an order of magnitude better than we can and I trust their eyes over my own. To say nothing of their caution.
One minute, three minutes…
Valerie sees him before I do.
“There,” she says and hands me the binoculars.
Adult male. Smaller, more compact than a female. White tail. White head. Eyes that look almost full front. Huge yellow beak. Six feet of span together with the length of those flight feathers means he pulls a lot of air, the wings beat deceptively slow. He covers the distance in no time.
And looks right at us.
It’s 6:30 in the morning, the summer folk vacated and gone and we are the only humans out at this hour, but even so. He can see even better than the gulls. But why he bothers to look – can’t say. He’s not in competition with us, not threatened. We are in the middle of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, he has no experience of harassment here much less harm. It is not a look of concern. Maybe, just the fact he’s here, by himself, we are here, by ourselves. Maybe, that’s all that life needs. To be worthy of a look. To draw attention.
I put the binoculars down now, he’s close enough they are not needed and we watch each other, not too different from medieval knights, raising their visors in salute.
Field Note:
Nothing I see in nature bores me because even what can be called “the same,” is never the same. I’ve seen bald eagles many times, all over the North America, literally coast to coast. They always grab my attention. I love the natural world. And I am always glad to see bald eagles. But the exchange described here, eye to eye and the contact, the recognition it implies, that was something else.
Never name and dismiss. Never say “Eagle,” and think you are done with it.
As to the eagle of this story, he and his mate live on the edge of the Salt Marsh Unit of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge. Last fall, I saw him doing something I did not know eagles could do: Hover. He was over the marsh, just above the Menunkatesuck River hunting for fish. I never saw him plunge, a 3rd year herring gull came along and chased him out. The relationship of herring gulls and bald eagles depends on who’s on top – literally. The gulls take off when they see an eagle to put distance, and height, between themselves and this apex predator. Here the eagle has the “upper hand.” But when the eagle is low, and the gulls manage to get over the eagle, well, Turnabout is Fair Play.
What is not fair play is what is about to happen to the Stewart B. McKinney. Refuge budgets have been cut every year for the last decade, in both Democratic and Republican administrations. The McKinney is now on the verge and if it becomes functionally inoperable what happens to the eagles nesting at the edge of the saltmarsh? Nothing good.
The National Wildlife Refuge System is quite literally, Nature Next Door. Nowhere in this country are you more than a tank of gas round trip from a National Wildlife Refuge, and for most of us much closer than that. It is, Local National Treasure.
—
Much of the wildlife of the Stewart B. McKinney can be seen at Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife: http://smeagullguide.org/
Mark Seth Lender’s Photography: http://marksethlender.com/
Special thanks to Ric Potvin, Refuge Manager, Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge.