When I was working on my bald eagle book 10 years ago, the bird often drew attention. Many times when I was photographing one, people would stop and talk about how cool it was to see it.
Fast forward to this past week. I was in a field with several other photographers when a pair of bald eagles circled over us. Nobody else looked up. Short-eared owls were deemed more interesting.
This isn’t a case of something being wrong. Rather, it’s a case of something being right.
For a few weeks a year, hundreds of bald eagles congregate along a short stretch of Hood Canal near the town of Seabeck, Washington. Bald eagles are opportunistic. While they are skilled hunters, they don't work any harder than they have to for their meals. Between a fish migration and wide tidal swings, the feeding is easy there in May and June.
As the leaves along the Cedar River in Washington state turn from green to yellow, gold, orange, and red, people walking along the river's banks may not notice there's an equally colorful display just under the water's surface. As the leaves change color, so, too, do the sockeye salmon returning to the river after spending the past couple years at sea.
If you would have asked me a decade ago about how a bird knows how to fly, I would have regurgitated the answer I was taught in school: They are hatched knowing how. But after intensely studying a bald eagle nest for three years, I not only believe the young eaglets learn to fly, but that their parents also learn to be better parents.
