The Elusive Eagles

Dale Matson

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Mature Bald Eagle Pair

After years of looking for, watching, and photographing the mighty eagles, I have come to see them as having special powers. The eagle is like the Romulan Starships from the Star Trek series. The “Warbirds” have a mechanism called a cloaking device which makes them become invisible and disappear.

The eagle too seems to have this ability. One minute the eagle is perched on a boulder near the water and what seems like only a couple of seconds later the eagle is nowhere to be seen. I curse myself for being so lax but is it really the fault of an elderly attention span and poor eyes? Of course not. The eagle is able to remain there cloaked and invisible. If a coot could talk, the coot’s last words would be, “Where did that eagle come from?”.

In the sky, while flying, eagles remain visible for a while, although unlike hawks, they don’t often hover almost motionless overhead. They have the ability to remain in the same location and simply circle higher and higher until they are no longer visible even with binoculars. They can circle with the sun overhead, making it impossible to see them either. When eagles fly below tree line, they blend in so well that it is nearly impossible to follow them with your eyes.

Eagles are Willow-the-Wisps and “Shape Shifters” too. When the eagle is flying amongst the trees, I wait for them to come out and pride myself for photographing them as they come out on the other side of the clump of trees, only to find out that I have lots of photos of a Red-Tailed Hawk.

They disguise themselves by blending in with other raptors in what is known as a “Kettle”. How many times have I missed taking a photo of a golden eagle because it was flying with a group of raptors, disguised as a hawk, turkey vulture or raven.

Eagles have another trick up the sleeves of their wings. They often sit with their backs to their prospective prey and only occasionally turn their heads in the direction they actually intend to go. They seem disinterested and aloof but they are very interested. A perched eagle almost always seems to fly away from the human observer instead of toward the camera. Most of my photos have been deleted because they are taken from the rear of the rear end of the bird.

Most often we think of eagles as locating themselves in the tops of trees and that is where we look for them. However, often they are below the treetops hidden in the foliage. We learn this when an eagle lands on a branch only to expose the presence of another eagle that was already there, invisible to the binoculars.

So much of the world of the eagle is based on the eagle’s vision. With a good perch, an eagle can see over a mile in any direction. The coots huddled together 100 meters from me are being observed by several eagles, each a mile distant in one direction or another.

I recently was watching an eagle catch a fish. The moment he caught it, two mature eagles and one juvenile eagle began to pursue the first eagle. Where in the world did they all come from? I had recently ‘swept and cleared’ the surrounding area of any other eagles with my 10 power binoculars.

Sometimes, every so often the eagles allow me a photo session and simply remain perched offering several poses. Eventually I leave or they leave, perhaps thinking, “He has enough photos for today.”

Eagle Above Nest