Traveling out, looking for this month’s
column in the landscape, 1 found myself on Crescent
Beach. Standing there, with a cold wind slapping
me in the face, 1 was slow to notice the huge forms
hovering a short distance over my head. Eagles.
Two of them, flying side-by-side.
Hanging
stationary in the airon immense wings. And behind
them, some distance away, there was a western gull,
bound by fishing line, staying aloft somehow,
despite the nylon tangle that encircled its head and
trailed off to a terminal clump of debris, whipping in
the wind a few feet behind. The scene reminded me
of many things. It reminded me of the threats that
have faced these birds, the injured, garbage-snared
fulls that arrive at wildlife rescue centers in a
continuous stream, with little hope for recovery. The
20*h century has been a harsh, almost apocalyptic
period for some Northwest wildlife, due to a steady
succession of new threats, introduced intentionally or
unintentionally, by the region’s human inhabitants.
Yet, it also reminded me of these birds’ resilience,
their perseverance; despite the many threats that they
have faced, each is still airborne. As the end of this
century approaches, bald eagles, once close to local
extinction on the north coast, have rebounded at an
awesome rate. Often, overhead, I am seeing eagles,
their broad brown wings silhouetted against the sky,
their calls filling the air with that high-pitched,
rusted-pulley staccato. Never before have I seen so
many eagles on the northern Oregon coast. And it
reminded me of a phone call from a friend of mine, a
couple days back. She had just spotted two eagles
over town. ‘They’re south of us...over by your
place...can you see them?? They’re flying your
way. Wait! Now they’re flying this way! Here they
come!! I have to go! [click]” It is always exciting to
see eagles.
Certainly, for as long as I can remember, 1
have been mesmerized by raptors, these big birds of
prey. I came by it honestly, I suppose, the son of a
man - a bird enthusiast and part-time pilot - who
aided raptor rescue operations when I was very
young. At that time, these big birds were used for
target practice by many rednecks, who were short on
compassion but had ammunition to spare.
A
dissenting group of rednecks, my father among
them, were appalled by the practice. They would
relocate hawks, owls, and eagles that were about to
be killed; elsewhere, they would locate injured
raptors, patch them up, keep them until they
recovered, and then release them back into the wild.
(Such Oregon coast operations as Bandon’s Free
Flight still continue this practice today.) Shortly
before my birth, my father had adopted one of these
birds, a red-tailed hawk. But when I was born, the
hawk was sent packing; my parents feared that it
would mistake me for a large, hairless rodent, which
- everyone agreed at the time - I closely resembled.
Though the old, welded perch sat empty, there was
plenty of talk about raptors, and many fine Saturdays
spent in places where the eagles and hawks soared
overhead, or in the canyons below.
Among all of the birds that I saw in the skies,
perhaps none was as awesome to behold as the bald
eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus. With a densely-
packed body, and a wingspan of up to 8 feet across,
it is a very big bird. Yet, it is graceful in flight, and
can perform great aerobatic feats, swooping, diving,
snagging fish from the water in its talons. Its thick
hooked yellow beak, and huge, black talons are well-
suited to the task of holding and shredding prey,
including birds, rodents, shellfish, snakes, and,
most of all, fish. Fish are their staple, and hundreds,
even thousands of eagles can be seen along some
Northwestern rivers during peak runs of herring or
salmon. When pickings are scarce, eagles - adept
fliers, all - will sometimes swoop down to jostle an
osprey, yet another fish-catching raptor, stealing the
osprey’s catch in mid-air. On rare occasion, coast­
dwelling eagles will try to snag a living bird off the
rocks, sending raucous clouds of seabirds skyward.
It is the sick and injured birds that the eagles seek
out. Some say that nesting birds spring skyward
when eagles approach, not to escape, but simply to
demonstrate their health. Their unfortunate peers
who don’t leap up become conspicuous, potential
targets, incipient Eagle Chow ®.
Under good conditions, bald eagles can live
up to 30 years. Immature eagles are brownish in
color, and are sometimes mistaken for other birds of
prey (but notice - young eagles are bulkier than most
raptors, mottled underneath with light white
blotches). At age four or five, eagles become adults;
their plumage takes on the characteristic white head
and tail, and they select a mate. Somewhat like the
salmon they consume, these birds range over great
distances, but usually return to the vicinity of their
birth to mate; once mates pair off, they usually stay
together for life.
When building nests, eagles
occupy the tallest trees, the most sturdy of snags.
Returning annually, eagles add on to the same nest,
year by year, until their nests reach awesome
proportions. Some nests may attain a diameter of
almost 10 feet; some will, after many seasons, come
to weigh almost 2000 pounds. Some will be used
continuously until the tree’s top collapses, sending
the entire nest crashing onto the forest floor below.
(Heads up.)
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an unusually broad spectrum of the American public.
Their concerted efforts brought tangible results.
DDT was outlawed in 1972 and, in the years that
followed, restoration efforts sprang up around the
country. Eggs from healthy birds were gathered and
hatched in captivity. (When their eggs disappear,
eagles simply lay another batch, doubling the number
of offspring they might have that year.) Elsewhere,
healthy eggs were used to replace eggs with fragile
shells. As levels of DDT and other contaminants
began to subside, eagles from thriving populations
were sometimes relocated to areas where eagles had
been depopulated in previous decades. In some
places where eagle-friendly conditions persisted,
such as at the Twilight Eagle Sanctuary, a short
distance up the Columbia from Astoria, people with
foresight took the opportunity to permanently set
aside lands to house breeding colonies of eagles.
The results, so far, have been impressive;
today, there are more than 4000 nesting pairs of bald
eagles in the lower 48, and a surging population of
youngsters who are, at present, unattached.
Ten
years ago, eagles were rare in the Cannon Beach
area, with only one or two breeding pairs hiding out
in the last stands of big timber. Today, it is quite
likely that you will see eagles overhead. Most of
them - and this is encouraging - are quite young. It
may be decades before we see numbers close to
those that existed historically, yet - so far - the trend
is promising. But don’t get too comfortable. (Heads
up.) The eagles are not yet out of the woods. There
are many chemical compounds still swirling around
the food chain, including a few new ones, that have
unknown impacts on living things, eagles among
them.
And, even in an environment free of
hazardous contaminants, the absence of suitable
habitat places restrictions on the number of eagles
that might return. Once, it was commonplace to find
giant trees, clean water, abundant fish, and quiet on
the Oregon coast, but this particular combination has
become increasingly rare. Still, there are still places,
here and there, that have these things, that meet all of
the eagles’ needs. Look for these places. Take good
care of these places. Right now, intentionally or
unintentionally, we are deciding whether future
generations will have the chance to stand on the
beach, look up, and see bald eagles soaring
overhead.
Each bald eagle has roughly 7100 feathers, of
many different designs. To some Northwestern
Native Americans, each type possessed a distinct
ceremonial significance, manifesting the enviable
qualities of eagles: their power, their fishing skills,
their personal loyalty to mates and ancestral places.
Traditionally, eagle down is tossed in the air at the
end of political negotiations, weddings and other
events, signifying a peaceful conclusion of
transactions and the ceremonial ‘Binding together’ of
families or villages.
Eagles range broadly, from the icy
northernmost fringes of North America down to
northern Mexico, but always, they will locate near
water rivers, lakes, marshes. Whenever possible,
they will locate close to the ocean. The proximity to
fish is key. The size of an eagle’s territory is a
function of the local availability of fish; the fewer the
fish, the greater the area required to make a living.
Nesting and feeding areas require relative solitude,
big trees, clean water, abundant fish; as these
conditions have disappeared across the North
American continent, so too has the eagles’ habitat.
In addition to the destruction and degradation of
habitat, though, the 20th century has brought many
other threats: not only target-shooting rednecks with
rifles, but also farmers and ranchers, some of whom
shot every raptor they saw, erroneously viewing
them all as an equal threat to chickens and young
livestock. Some eagles suffered from lead poisoning,
as they snatched up injured birds, filled with hunters’
lead shot.
Perhaps most threatening of all, though, was
the pollution.
A number of hazardous chemical
compounds, PCBs, dieldrin, DDT, were spread
liberally over the North American landscape in the
mid-2Cr century. Though not toxic in small doses,
creatures at the top of the food chain, cumulatively
consuming vast numbers of infected prey, often
ingested very large and hazardous doses. DDT, for
example, sprayed on croplands throughout the
country, would be washed off the land into nearby
waterways. There, it was absorbed into the tissues
of small aquatic plants and animals that were, in turn,
eaten by fish. Eagles and other birds, such as
ospreys, then ate these fish in large numbers. The
contaminant grew more concentrated at each level up
the food chain, finally reaching toxic levels among
the eagles. DDT contamination caused eagles to
develop nervous system disorders, and interfered
with their reproductive cycle. Eagle’s egg shells
became very thin; the adult birds, attempting to
incubate these eggs, would crush them under their
own weight.
The impact on eagle populations was
devastating. The contiguous 48 states housed up to
75,000 bald eagles two centuries ago, when they
were declared the national bird. By the 1960s, when
they were listed for Endangered Species Act
protection, there were fewer than 450 nesting pairs
left. As both a national symbol and an environmental
poster-bird, the eagle’s plight drew the attention of
_ ——
You can find much more information on bald eagles
in David Gordon’s book, Audubon Society Field
Guide to the Bald Eagle (Seattle, Sasquatch Books,
1991) or Jonathan Gerrard and Gary Bortolotti’s
book, The Bald Eagle: Haunts and Habits o f a
Wilderness Monarch (Washington D.C, Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1988). The North Coast Land
Conservancy has played an important role in
identifying and purchasing sensitive eagle nesting
areas on the northern Oregon coast.
Everything is funny as long as it’s happening to
somebody else.
Will Rogers
S am A bsher
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