Tag Archives: Bald eagles
Dirty Birds – What it’s like to live with a national symbol
Dutch Harbor is a small town on a small island far out in Alaska’s Aleutian chain, nearly 1,200 miles from Anchorage at the edge of the Bering Sea. It’s the most productive fishing port in the United States. Every winter the tiny population swells with thousands of people who come to work in the fish processing plants, on the crab boats, or out on the big cod and pollack trawlers. But they’re not the only ones trying their fortunes in town or out on the boats. People in town call them Dutch Harbor pigeons. The rest of us call them bald eagles. In a community of just over 4,700 permanent residents, there live an estimated 500 to 800 eagles. They stare judgily down from light posts, peer intently into people’s windows, eat foxes and seagulls while perched in the trees next to the high school, and sit on rooflines like living weather vanes. Down at the docks, they swarm every boat that comes into port like some sort of Hitchcockian nightmare, fighting for scraps of bait, elbowing one another for prime positions, crowding together on top of crab pots, and squawk-cheeping their opinions. View more images, read the story here 11:01
Bald eagles bad news for seabird on Oregon Coast
Scientists at Oregon State University who are studying the seabird have documented how the increase of bald eagles – especially along the central Oregon coast – is having a significant impact on the murre’s reproductive success. It is developing into a fascinating ecological tale of which the ending has not yet played out. more@kval 11:01
