During a recent run along the Hudson River, I spied a bald eagle standing in the middle of the road. It pulled brutally on an opossum carcass. I slowed to a walk, my attention fixed on its bright white head. It noticed me, and with some effort - maybe it was full of opossum - launched itself into an overhanging tree1. That’s when I noticed the second eagle, a juvenile almost as big as the adult, perched nearby. They stared at me, waiting for me to pass. I stared back. I can’t not stare back. Bald eagles always remind me of my Dad
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When I was young, my Dad took me to the Adirondacks and we camped near a beautiful lake overnight. Its shores were dominated by conifers and I don’t remember seeing anyone else. It was just the two of us and nature. This was sometime in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, so my memory exists in spurts and select images, but I do remember three things.
I remember apple turnovers. My Dad had brought a box of them for breakfast. To this day, I love apple-filled pastries - apple pie, apple coffee cake, danishes. We sat on a high embankment looking out across the lake as I gnawed happily on the flaky crust and apple deliciousness.
The second thing I remember is that my Dad said grace before our breakfast, but he instructed me to not close my eyes, as one usually does during prayer. He said that in a place like the Adirondacks it was easier to be thankful because of the beauty of the surrounding creation. Nature is always pointing to God, he told me. I remember feeling surprised, slightly guilty for not squeezing my eyes shut, and excited, looking out across the water, listening to my Dad express thanks for the moment and the food.
And then I dropped my apple turnover and it skittered down the hemlock-covered slope. It came to rest several feet below me and there was no way for either of us to retrieve it, and anyway, it was ruined - covered in Adirondack dirt and needles. I didn’t want my Dad to be annoyed. I think I started to cry.
My Dad didn’t get annoyed or upset. He told me it was no big deal, and he handed me a second one (possibly with a reminder to hold onto it - the exact same thing I’d say to one of my girls).
A bit later, a red squirrel, much smaller than the gray squirrels I was used to at home, came darting out of the underbrush and started dragging the lost turnover away. The pastry was as large as it was. Its effort was epic. We laughed.
On this trip I saw a bald eagle for the first time. It wheeled high above the lake and then dropped into the bright water. It was fishing. My Dad, a bit of a bird-watcher who often consulted bird-identification books, and always seemed to have binoculars handy, was very excited. He pointed and talked with enthusiasm and reverence for this huge bird of prey. I was giddy as well.
I am not sure if he directly stated the significance of this sighting or not, but at that time I thought that seeing this bird would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Our excitement was enhanced by this creature’s rarity. We all knew that bald eagles, our National Bird, were threatened, on the verge of extinction. As a young boy, I never dreamed that I’d see one, but there it was, wings straight out to the side, it’s brilliant head and tail clear for me to watch.
Since then, the tale of the bald eagle’s recovery has been an ecological “success”2 story. I’d assumed most United States citizens were familiar with the story until I was teaching ecology to ninth graders this year. Most of them had no idea that these eagles almost went extinct in the lower 48 states. One reason they didn’t know is that they see them often. I work in Albany, near the Hudson River, and these birds are regular, if surprising, sightings. The other reason is that this story is an older one - a story that took place forty years ago! I realized that I am “bald-eagles-are-almost-extinct” years old.
Eagle populations had been in decline in The United States since the early 1900’s. Farmers viewed them as pests and blamed them for killing chickens, lambs, and other livestock. Habitat loss, as usual, played a large part as well (remember, in 1890, New York State was 90% deforested, and now, believe it or not, it is 90% forested).
Though the bald eagle was nationally protected in 1940, its numbers continued to dwindle well into the 1960’s and 1970’s largely due to the use of dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane, or DDT, a pesticide used for mosquito control.
DDT bioaccumulates in eagles and other upper level predators due to its absorption and retention by fish (through plants and plankton). It interferes with egg shell formation. Bald eagle eggs become brittle and then they break before hatching.
Rachel Carson and others exposed the dangers of this and other compounds in the late 1960’s, and in 1972 the EPA banned DDT, though it still remains in production in India and is used in parts of Africa and Asia for mosquito-borne illness control (malaria, etc.).
Since then, eagle populations have rebounded in the lower 48 states.3
On my runs here in the Catskills I’ll see them weekly, sometimes soaring high above me, sometimes perched in standing snags in the tidal swamps. And each time, I still feel the awe I felt sitting on the shores of that Adirondack lake viewing one for the first time with my Dad. I am grateful for my Dad each time I see them. And I am grateful that he taught me that eagles represent more than they appear. Bald eagles are, to me, an open-eyed prayer.
It is possible that the opossum was dropped by this bird. I saw two separate marks on the road that made it look like the opossum landed on the road and was not just hit by a car and an easy scavenge. Not likely, but maybe.
Imagine if we measured success in our communities by saying to our neighbors, “I stopped killing your family with toxins, isn’t that awesome!” That’s kind of what success means here.
I remember visiting Valdez, Alaska in the mid-1990’s and seeing eagles circling the fjords like gulls over Fire Island. I couldn’t stop staring at them - so many eagles! In Alaska, I learned, their population was not nearly as impacted.