The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When I first moved to the South End, there were no eagles in the area. If I had company who asked about seeing a few of the national birds, I drove them 50 miles up north to Deception Pass where usually we could spot one or two working the channel with its whirlpools bubbling up baitfish. The first eagles to show up around me built a nest in the Tyee Store wrecking yard out back so they could hunt in the pond the store stocked with bass and trout. So much for the notion that eagles are xenophobic. They’re looking for easy food and if they have to nest in a Walmart parking lot, so be it.

A friend mentioned to me the other day that she had seen 19 eagles circling overhead above the beach. That’s more air traffic than an Amazon drone testing site. The eagles have definitely rebounded since lead poisoning nearly killed them off back in the 60’s. So when I was exploring a bluff a few miles south of here the other day, standing maybe 300 feet above the waterfront, I spied a lone fir tree below me and there, about 50 feet down was a new nest with an eagle sitting on her eggs in plain unobstructed view. Maybe you think big deal, so what? But ask yourself if you’ve ever seen the inside of a ten foot diameter eagle nest. We look UP at eagles’ nests and maybe if we’re lucky, across at one like the one that’s over at the state park the last few years.

But to have a view from above? C’mon, it is a big deal. Especially if you have a camera and are willing to come back every day to watch for when the eggs hatch and the parents bring in salmon or grey whales to feed the little tykes. Maybe watch them fledge, stepping off over the abyss and catching that first draft above Puget Sound. Needless to say, I’m going to keep the location to myself. I don’t need National Geographic or the Flathead Vintage Auto Club beating a rush hour path to the nest.

I probably won’t give the pair cute names and I won’t post photos of the hatchlings on Facebook. You three or four readers of this un-viral blog will be part of an elite coterie of eagle voyeurs. PBS, eat yer heart out….

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 30th, 2019 at 2:15 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.