A friend fed an eagle over the weekend.
Nothing really unusual about it. I’m sure it happens occasionally. It has happened to me a few times.
Eagles, who have made a major comeback over the last few years, are fairly common these days. It wasn’t too long ago that you hardly saw them. They were on the edge of extinction. Now they’re back. And they have some stuff figured out.
One thing I have noticed is they really don’t mind people. Oh, they might not come down and sit on your shoulder like a chickadee, which is okay because it has not escaped my notice that both ends of an eagle are equipped with pointy bits I would rather avoid. But I have noticed on many occasions that they have figured out fishing.
If they spot a human fishing, they are quite likely to hang around and see if you throw back an injured fish. You know, one that might become lunch for an eagle.
Usually when they do this, they don’t hang around for long periods. They’ll scope you out, maybe check in now and again, but they don’t spend long periods watching.
On the weekend we came across an eagle who seemed to want to hang around for a while.
It was a juvenile. It had white head feathers, but they weren’t all white, so it was probably a couple years old. We were out doing some bass fishing, and it followed us. For quite a ways. It moved from tree to tree as we moved along and kept pace for quite a while. Watching. Finally, someone hooked a fish that was injured in the process. It was still released, in the hope it might come around. It didn’t. But the eagle did.
It swept down, grabbed the fish and headed back to a tree for lunch. Impressive to watch, as I’m sure anyone who has been to the eagle feedings over the winter can attest.
But it started me thinking, what do they think of us? This thing was following us. For quite a while. It was not out hunting or scavenging, but it was waiting for lunch. It’s not like we were going to invite it by for a sandwich. But it obviously knew what it was doing.
After thinking about it for a while, it came to me that this is probably not good. On top of the fact that feeding wildlife is not good for a number of reasons, there’s the fact that he was following us for a reason.
Eagles are likely not really big thinkers. I doubt there is a school of philosophy for birds of prey. But the fact that this bird followed us for a while before it got what it wanted seems to indicate one thing, at least to me. They see us as the animals that throw away food.
That’s probably not a good thing.
