Their table manners are atrocious, and, for the most part, their cuisine is obscene. In a group, they're bullies, thieves too. Bald eagles will grab fish right out of the claws of an osprey, and enjoy the crime, not having to get their nails wet. It’s happened, I’m told, that some fishermen with outsized catches lost their trophies even before the fish went on the stringer. Seriously, a bald eagle will steal you blind.
Not everyone is taken by them. No less a man than John James Audubon, America’s legendary bird-er, thought the eagle wasn’t really a fit national symbol. Ben Franklin thought the same: “a rank coward,” Franklin said of them, “a bird of bad moral character.” He thought a turkey would make a better national symbol.
And one more thing: an eagle’s cry is disturbingly out of character. High-pitched and shrill, seemingly panic-stricken, an eagle’s sharp chirping is greatly unbecoming of a presence that appears so fearless. Approach a nest sometime and you’ll set both parents a’screaming like blue jays on steroids, except more soprano. When they soar above you, you’ll wish for ear plugs.
No matter. Anyone who’s seen what they do in the sky knows darn well that our bald eagles are royalty. No matter where they roam, their pure majesty makes you want to bow. When they stand in elegant, unsmiling silence, especially if you’re blessed to see them in a group, you may feel an odd desire to salute.
Good night, do they soar. Most every Native American tribe includes some kind of eagle-like motion in their dance repertoire, men who swoop and soar, arms outstretched, mimicking the kingly ease of an eagle’s heavenly grace. Eagles portray freedom, wheeling as they do through the open skies, aloof and regal. It’s no wonder we put them on our coins, no wonder fancy dancers recreate their majesty.
For several years now, a pair have taken up residence in a row of cottonwoods on our friend’s pastureland along the Missouri. Mom and Dad--or so our friends speculate--may well be gone. But some of the chicks have doubled back.
Weird—calling young eagles “chicks.” They’re three-feet tall, but easily distinguishable because that white hood they wear doesn’t mature until they’re four or five years old. In 1967, our bald eagles were placed on the Endangered Species list, but today they’re proud members of the “Least Concerned” category. Doing very, very well, even here in our neighborhood, riding the winds along the Floyd River. Big Sioux has lots of them too.
They should be hanging around in groups about now, beginning of winter. When they get together, you’ve got two choices of what to call them. One is a soar. That’s not a verb. “You just watch those big cottonwood right now, because by nightfall there’ll be a soar of eagles up there.”
The other word is just plain gorgeous. “Up there in the trees, see ‘em? —wow! a whole convocation. Convocation—they’re priests and potentates, a convocation of eagles.
Last week at Ponca State Park, I was hunting down a good shot or two of the Missouri River when I spotted a slender finger-like peninsula jutting out into the flow. It was a long way down, so I snapped on the biggest lens in the bag, then sighted in that finger of land.
Later, when I opened the file, the shot was no masterpiece; but there, high in the branches of those faraway cottonwoods, was a white head on a tawny body. There he was. I hadn’t even seen him—or her.
Not long ago you could probably count our bald eagles without a bit of technology. These days, all over, they show up, even when we aren’t looking.
Isn’t that wonderful? If you spot a convocation, let me know.
