Somehow
reading Spring in Washington over a cup of coffee
at Starbucks hoping some of my friends will show up isn't
quite satisfying me. I'm loving the description of the
flight of the ring-billed gull as the perfect example of
gull flight, especially since ring-billed gulls are
probably my favorite gull species. However, the abundance
of bald eagles in Halle's descriptions of spring
unfolding in the nation's capitol in 1945 gets me
restless. Never mind sitting
drinking coffee and reading. Real 2003 bald eagles are
better than literary 1945 ones. I'm powerless over the
call to the Chain Bridge.
I drive along the river hoping to
see some ducks displaying, but there's still a lot of ice
between Lawrence/Haverhill and Amesbury. I half expect to
see some eagles along the way but none of them show
themselves.
I spot two immature bald eagles
flying in circles low over the river when I first arrive
at the bridge. I'm not even out of the car yet and it's
already a great day. Everything is alive and active. It's
this concentrated spectacle of bird life in a relatively
small area.
A great cormorant catches a
catfish, works it with the beak to position it or
something, and finally swallows it whole. Remarkably this
cormorant has no hassles. For the rest of the
afternoon, every time a
cormorant catches a fish four or five other cormorants
chase after it trying to get the fish and a great black
backed gull swoops down off the light post and circles
over the cormorant fracas looking for an opportunity to
grab the fish. The cormorants steal the fish from each
other until one finally ends up with it or most of it.
The great black back never gets a bite at least while I'm
watching.
The two immature bald eagles
continue to fly low, at one point so low over the bridge
that I feel a draft when it passes over my head. I hear a
whole lot of crows cawing and then a wild, blood-stirring
bald eagle scream. Looking in the direction of the caws
and screams I see an adult bald eagle with full white
head and tail sitting on a branch eating something that
looks mammalian. The crows back off and head
elsewhere.
A
great blue heron lands on an ice floe and three great
cormorants converge on it. I can't see whether the heron
has a fish or not. Can it fish from that small ice floe?
One of the cormorants has a fish already so I'm not sure
what the want from the heron. The heron makes a loud
noise, kind of a very deep squawk, and takes off after
the cormorants then flies back to the bridge. I can't
remember ever hearing a great blue heron vocalize before.
The great blue flies to another ice floe and stands there
as it floats downriver.
Three common
merganser drakes start displaying madly with their chests
up out of the water and suddenly accelerating with feet
paddling unbelievably fast. They zip around like that at
top speed while the rest of the common mergansers catch
small silvery fish that I can't identify except to note
that they aren't catfish. All the while they're
vocalizing too. It's not a quack like a mallard. It's
more like a croak. A deep croak. A group of the
cormorants comes toward the mergansers and they start
making some kind of guttural noise too. Great sounds
effects today.
A single ring-billed gull flies
overhead and I get a chance to compare its flight to the
great black back's. The ring-billed's flight looks
effortless and buoyant, almost like a tern but even more
graceful. It makes the great black back look ungainly.
Would I have paid this much attention to the difference
if I hadn't been reading Spring in Washington this
morning? I don't know. I do know that I have seen a
ring-billed gull flycatching (granted greenheads are
slow, but still...) and I've never ever seen a great
black back do that!
While I've been watching the
heron/cormorant/merganser/gull show, one of the immature
bald eagles has landed on the same tree as the adult. I
hear some more screams, but weak and muted like the eagle
is not really into it. The other immature eagle flies
over, puts its legs down with talons open, folds its
wings into a kind of parachute, and descends to a higher
branch of the tree. There are now three bald eagles
perched on one tree.
Just beyond the eagle tree about 20
great cormorants roost on the underside of the I-95
bridge invisible to the traffic going by on the highway.
In fact the people in cars on I-95 probably can't see the
eagles either even though they are very close to the
bridge and prominent on the bare tree branches because
the people in cars on I-95 don't know they're there. The
Chain Bridge/Merrimack Essex Bridge and the I-95 bridge
may as well be in separate universes. Maybe they
are in separate universes.
