Fish Thieves and the Eagles Tree
I never knew Jan and I would be bird watchers, but we have a few that we especially look for in our travels.
The first one is out of spite. That might sound odd considering some watch for birds for a hobby and generally like to see birds out in nature. But we have a special, and expensive, bond with Blue Herons. Some think they are fascinating, peculiar, and maybe neat. We think they are mooches and thieves!
When we bought our house we also inherited a small fish pond. It was a novelty; I never thought I would be a fish pond-er that tended to fish in my precious spare time. But there I was, trying to keep fish alive and the pond somewhat clean.
We decided that what we really needed was some new fish. So we bought a neat Koi fish and introduced him to our mountain life and gave him a home.
The problem with our little cabin in the woods was that it was very close to a popular trout-fishing creek and another smaller stream. And where there are fish there are birds looking for an easy lunch!
One morning I nearly dropped my coffee cup when I saw our new Koi fish hanging out of the mouth of a Blue Heron. That crook was standing in our fish pond and made quick work of our expensive hobby fish. The nerve! He stood there all regal and elegant and swallowed our pet down in one easy motion. Sigh. In a battle of man versus nature I was losing to a bird with fragile looking legs and a big beak.
This guy came back to our fish pond every day for a week, looking for something easy to eat. Our fish pond was fully stocked and the finding of lunch was far easier than hanging out at the creek all day, looking and waiting for a meal to swim by. The little pond, the big fish, and the ease of catching the fish made all of the wild leave a wild bird. Our Blue Heron “buddy” was lured into a life of pursuing the easy rather than living on the wild side.
Eventually our fish pond was empty and the Blue Heron had to resort back to a wild life of hanging out the creek. We see Blue Herons quite frequently down at the stream and while they appear to be wild I always think back to the Blue Heron Bandit that ate our fish and kept coming back for more.
On the other end of our bird-watching fascination lies the Bald Eagle. Jan found this guy while walking on a backroad near our house. He was perched high in a tree, overlooking his kingdom and taking inventory of everything that was going on. Even at a distance you could sense his strength and power just through his posture and different look. There was something about his white head and stoic stance in a tree that was fascinating.
Every walk Jan would come home and tell me of her Eagle sighting and her thought that if she saw the eagle that all was well in the world. He wasn’t a thief or a free-loader like the Blue Heron!
I started running the same road and hoped to catch a glimpse of the eagle. He was more rare to find than any other bird. You would get the sense that He was around but you wouldn’t always see him. But you just knew that he had his eyes on the territory around us!
We found the eagles nest in the middle of a field. It would be nearly impossible to walk to this tree, its surrounded by marshy muck and it’s far away from anything that could be a threat or hinderance to an eagle’s survival. It’s a secret place but the nest is HUGE! You can tell that its designed for a lot of eagles to be raised, instructed, and nurtured there…but you have to be an eagle and do eagle things.
The blue heron ate our fish 10 yards from our kitchen. An eagle would prefer to be 10 miles from any human. We loved seeing the eagle from a distance and have had a few chance encounters with them at a closer distance. But never for long…they don’t like the spot light and they certainly won’t give you the time to fumble around with your phone to take a picture. They are wild!
Last week we were driving and one was in the middle of a dive-bomb towards the field to our left. The speed and size of a bald eagle is amazing! It was just feet from our windshield and we had an upclose view of the sheer strength and size of this bird. It’s one thing to see an eagle sitting in a tree with it’s wings tucked and folded, but to be in the presence of one in full flight, in all of its wild-ness with its wings extended is captivating. You want to be around an eagle. You want to have eagle-like tendencies as a human!
My concern is that too often we live like that Blue Heron at our fish pond. We settle. We lose our natural ability and desire to do the hard things and the things we were born to do. We are less wild and more ritualistic. We trade the spontaneity for the programmed. It took one day for our Blue Heron friend to ditch the wild life of hunting fish in a wide creek for the ease of catching a family fish in a 10 foot fish pond. Imagine all of us with weeks, months, and years of settling for a life of ease on our own terms.
The eagle life is something different. It’s sometimes isolating. It’s not drawn to crowds. Even with the tremendous strength an eagle has most have no idea because an eagle doesn’t broadcast its strengths! An eagle lives in a nest that’s hidden, away from distractions. It’s a secret place that an eagle goes to grow and be sustained. A lot happens in that nest but not everyone knows about it. And when the eagle is out and about it does its thing without fanfare. But to see an eagle in full flight and with their strengths exposed…wow! It’s beautiful. It’s captivating. It’s wild and wonderful, not programmed and half-hearted. Only eagles “eagle-ing” can do those things.
The eagle life and the blue heron. I love seeing them both in the wild. One stays wild while the other can easily be swayed to give up its freedom for a perceived easy living!
Be an eagle, friends!
