The bald eagle swooped and my heart hammered as enormous wings darkened the sky and talons like lethal scimitars passed only a few feet above my head. I retreated. Quickly.
Armed with a telephoto lens and high on a ridge on Pender Island in British Columbia’s balmy Gulf Islands, I had been watching a small eagle chick in a nest. Wanting to get closer photos, I was scrambling down the ridge when the mother eagle showed her displeasure.
The majestic bald eagle is found only in North America where its population totals about 100,000. It is most numerous in coastal British Columbia and Alaska but healthy breeding populations thrive to Ontario.
On Pender Island, I see them frequently. I am part of Project Eagle Watch, a group of volunteers, who study the eagles and help protect them. Our leader David Manning says, “I love the peace and quiet of watching eagles. It is like meditation and draws me deeper into my own spirit.”
I learned that 17 eagle pairs live on Pender Island and have built 30 nests; all at the tops of tall Douglas fir trees and most within 100 metres of the sea. By good fortune, one of the nests has an even higher ridge behind it, allowing us to peer down into the nest like voyeurs.
Manning explained how eagle pairs, who bond for life and occupy the same territory every year, mate in February and usually lay two eggs around the end of March. The female incubates the eggs for about 35 days, with occasional help from the male. She turns the eggs every hour or so to ensure uniform heating and seldom leaves the eggs.
In early April, I peered over the cliff’s edge with binoculars. Below, an eagle was resting in a nest, an enormous two-metre-diameter jumble of branches. The eagle took flight, circled and then landed on the edge of the nest, from which two eggs gleamed like giant white eyeballs.
I was captivated, and began to visit that nest frequently. The slope was a special place, alive with the flutter of birds flying amongst ram-rod-straight firs, gnarled Garry oaks and gangling arbutuses with rust-red bark.
Two weeks later, one egg had hatched. The mom, a fierce raptor with a two-metre wing span and menacing talons and beak, gently and lovingly placing food into the tiny beak of her chick. The chick’s light grey down shone like a halo in the afternoon sun.
A few weeks later, Mom was tearing chunks from a fish and feeding it to her chick, now about 10 inches high. The second egg never hatched.
Eaglets, I learned, are fed by both parents. Then, at six to seven weeks, they start feeding themselves. Under my gaze, the young eagle grew rapidly and its grey down transformed to brown feathers. As the weeks went by, the parents spent less and less time at the nest although the mother often perched nearby. One misty day, I was rewarded with the sight of the whole family together. First, mother and father perched together like two love birds atop a nearby tree. Then they flew down onto branches beside their chick.
This happy scene belied the fact that bald eagles almost became extinct in the 1950s due to the widespread use of the pesticide DDT. Although bald eagles have made a remarkable recovery — there are about 25,000 in BC today and they were removed from the US endangered list in 2007 — they face long-term threats. The number of salmon, their favourite food, is decreasing, so eagles now hunt other food including small animals and other birds. Furthermore, the tall trees near shorelines that eagles need are the ones loggers covet, and that are located on prime real estate.
I was astonished at how quickly a young chick grows. By early August (about 12 weeks old), an eaglet is the same size as its parents but dark brown in colour. It will not develop the distinctive white head and tail feathers until it reaches adulthood in four to five years. It perches for long periods on the nest’s edge or a metre or two out on adjoining branches. Occasionally, it bursts into bouts of vigorous wing flapping and hopping into the air.
A young eagle finally leaves the confinement of the nest toward the end of its twelfth week. Imagine a human baby not leaving its crib until it is fully grown and can walk!
Fledging day has its own suspense, for the eaglet is reluctant to leave its comfortable home. The parents perch on a nearby tree with food to entice the chick. After some time, often aided by a gust of wind, the chick takes flight. Although the world is now open to it, the youngster remains near the nest until it learns how to hunt.
In the fall, eagles leave Pender Island, drawn by the rich abundance of spawning salmon in rivers and streams along the coast. They gather in surprisingly large numbers to feast and socialize. In 1994, for example, more than 3,700 bald eagles were counted in one day along the Cheakamus River near Brackendale, BC.
Over the winter, eagle pairs drift back to their territories, while the juveniles set out to seek their own locales. I have my camera ready, and will be waiting for the life cycle to begin again.
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