Re: birds, eagle/heron, or delete

this is my bald eagle/blue heron story. if you've read it a dozen times before, accept my apology and hit the delete button.

it was a warm day in winter, the short one and i had just purchased a new convertible [her mid-life chrysler], and we were driving through blackwater wildlife refuge with the top down. blackwater is on the chesapeake bay out of cambridge, maryland. the road through the refuge is essentially a big loop and we were on the back side of the loop. on the driver's side of the road was a swale with maybe a foot or so of water in it.

we marvelled to see, a short way ahead of us a great blue heron fishing the swale and--as we watched, it caught a fish! but just as we were congratulating ourselves on such a witnessing [and by now we were nearly abreast of the heron], we heard a most blood-curdling scream. and there, maybe 10 feet from the car was a bald eagle, flying at the heron, talons and claws in front, and demanding the fish.

the heron [no dummy, of course] dropped the fish. the eagle caught it before it hit the water. and was off. we watched its flight as it headed straight for a tree-top nest maybe 500 yards away.


At 04:55 PM 2/23/03 -0500, you wrote:
About 6 months ago, I noticed something about as big as a medium-size dog on
the jetty near the beach and got the binoculars to have a better look. It
was a bald eagle striding up and down, looking for a fish. After 5 minutes
or so, it jumped into the water and then flew away with a luckless fish in
its grasp.

Maria NE PA, zone 5b

>
> Totally not a Blue Heron, but still a bird, this morning in an old dead
> cottonwood tree, saw my first ever bald eagle in Winslow. I'd almost
> forgotten how gd big those birds are.
> When stationed for a while in the Aleutians, when we would clean our catch
> of fish (in a certain gov't designated area) the eagles would be standing
> around waiting to scarf up what we'd discard. As I recall, the size of
> those birds and the size of their talons and beak made me thankful that they
> were peacefully waiting for their part, and not contesting mine. Rich in
> Z-5
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <Cornergar@aol.com>
> To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
> Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 6:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [CHAT] birds
>
>
>> This is interesting to me, Jim as our Great Blue heron is very shy and
> will
>> fly if he detects my shadow at the window 50 ft away!
>>
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