America’s bald eagle population continues to soar
fws.gov
fws.gov
The hawk says: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/sounds
The eagle says: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bald_Eagle/sounds
It's worse than the Wilhelm Scream.
Edit: What we need is a satirical movie full of in-jokes, like opening a wilderness long-shot with a Wilhelm Scream.
"We need a dispatchment 148...mumble mumble...ksshhh"
I first heard that playing one of the first (top down) GTA games and hear it in half the police dramas I watch.
The bald eagle screech is not that of the bald eagle.
Plenty of eagle species are bald yet the "bald" eagle isn't bald.
If you think about it, it's a fantastic metaphor for the US :-p
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/american-myths-b...
Once audiences become accustomed to certain sound effects, however inaccurate, they come to expect those sounds. When audiences expect the fake sound, they might even think the film/show is inaccurate if it uses a different, more accurate sound for the same effect.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect
https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/155912289_4304...
I have some good shots of one eating breakfast behind my house as well. Kind of gory though.
This hotspot is relatively new so the larger lists aren't associated to it.
I mean, you could almost certainly harvest more than 70 pounds of ants a day without making a dent in the ant population. Eagles can't eat ants, but "pounds of life" doesn't mean much.
Also this is a seasonal occurrence.
It's always fun to see them on the drive up north, too. Such cool looking birds.
I’m a couple of hours east of you, but it’s rare to see other Arkansans on HN.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game[1]:
"Found only in North America, bald eagles are more abundant in Alaska than anywhere else in the United States. The Alaska population is estimated at 30,000 birds."
So you think they bent over backwards, and dishonestly at that, for a 10% change in reported count?
Also, "on par with seagulls"?
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[1] http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=baldeagle.main
“on par with seagulls” meaning seeing 100 in one single area
Er, which town is it?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/incredible-sight-thousands-o...
I didn't realize this until recently. I grew up in Missouri in the 1990s, where they were relatively common outside of town. You'd still point them out to other people when you saw one, but it wasn't a huge deal. Then I went to the Oakland Zoo a few years ago and they seemed to be a very popular attraction.
In Juneau the best place to find them between salmon runs is near the landfill.
It does come up when discussing shipping and transportation, but Alaska and Hawaii also each have a distinct enough culture and distinctly different set of challenges. Every State along the Colorado river is part of an interstate compact to manage water rights, but if Alaska has a dispute with British Columbia over some resource along their borders, that’s an international matter that pulls in the Department of State and Canada’s, Foreign Office? I know some of the British offices but I’m actually not familiar with Canada’s government agency nomenclature.
Because for a while it was accurate, and the usage stuck even after it changed (Alaska was admitted before Hawai’i.)
A similar reason a large swath of the north-central part of the continental US is called the Midwest. (In Census uses, where the smaller divisions have more modern/accurate names, this is ironic because the Midwest region consists of the West North Central and East North Central divisions.)
The fun thing is there's a line through my property. The eagles' territory is west of the line, the hawks' is to the east. Sometimes they fight over the location of that line.
The hawks are half the size of the eagles, but they don't take no ** from the eagles, and it's a fair fight. The hawks usually win the tussle and drive the eagles back over the line. It's like a WW1 aerial dogfight.
And this is in the middle of the Seattle metropolitan area.
Centerport is a fairly well-off community, so they have some powerful allies (and you see some expen$ive camera gear).
Their call is...unimpressive. I call it "The call of the sick gull."
The classic "eagle" call is actually a redtail (we have them, too).
I had to Google it. So true. Like a song-bird crossed with nails-on-chalkboard.
And the red-tail, which I have heard locally, is the stuff of (mouse/snake) nightmares.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=156187...
I was doing some trail building this last fall and there was a red tailed hawk nest across the valley. It was pretty amazing to hear that classic "eagle" call every now and again while working.
Either way, as a kid I remember being told to assume you'd never see one and they'd probably be extinct in my lifetime. Now I couldn't even tell you how many I've seen, from as far east as PA and north to AK.
Considering that hunters shoot millions of lead bullets each year, it seems a small problem? It's suggested that birds eat guts from eviscerated animals that hunters leave behind. Perhaps a policy of burying or scattering the guts would solve the problem?
Here in Northern California, we're actually unable to use poisons on pest rodents like squirrels and rats since they often enter the ecosystem through raptors ingesting them.
My friends with a lot of land were advised to get pellet guns and air rifles to deal with their squirrel problems. It's considered the lowest impact to the ecosystem and food chain.
"Bald eagles across the United States are dying from lead poisoning":
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/16/us/bald-eagles-dying-lead...
"CALIFORNIA'S LEAD AMMO BAN IN EFFECT JULY 1[2019]":
https://www.gohunt.com/read/news/californias-lead-ammo-ban-i...
I think most of this is anti-gun lobbying. When people are reduced to stoning wild ducks and spearing deer then anti-gunners will ask Congress to ban sticks and stones.
You shoot steel from the same barrel as lead, it's a quite different effect. Range, drop, spread are all different, and lesser.
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=baldeagle.printerf...
After nearly two decades I left the area and sightings of bald eagles were just run of the mill every day events like any other bird.
I live elsewhere now and a couple pairs of bald eagles live in a urban / suburban area near me seemingly quite healthy and happy.
It has been a pretty amazing change.
You don't realize it until one drops out of a tree near you and flies off. Either that or you see them feeding on road kill deer.
Incidentally it’s interesting how many raptors seem to like hanging around in airport traffic patterns. I realize there’s a bit of a selection bias here, but I do work at similar altitudes away from airports and sightings aren’t nearly as common out in the field. I like to think they’re reminding the metal birds who’s boss.
Also, semi off topic -- Great horned owls like using inflatable pools as bird baths.
But I saw one at the top of an electrical tower and from the ground it was large but not gigantic. Much later on they took the nest down and it was the size of a Mini! Yes, the British car.
https://img.ifunny.co/images/70898eeb8bc2323e320aca74b03bb9a...
"Basically a glorified seagull"
In the UK our national bird is the Robin :)
My house backs a golf course and we currently have a nesting pair of red-tail hawks about 200 yards away. Every once in a while, one soars by with a snake in beak. They also tussle with the local crows (who I assume are tying to snatch eggs).
It's insanely addictive. Over 40 eaglets have hatched out of there since they've been counting. Also potentially interesting to this crowd, the energy plant is natural gas but was originally a thorium nuclear plant.
Anyway, I remember trying to video those things where I grew up. But they were pretty shy, so I could never get close enough to get a good picture of them. Really amazing bird though not Bald Eagles given that I'm from Europe. If you've got the patience and the equipment to get good pictures of those, then kudos to you, because that's not easy!
I guess I should be careful what I wish for.
These are great terms. Thanks.
> https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/03/513302816/epis...
> Over time, though, Harris's worldview changed. He started to see the downside to the industrial farming ... To replace the chemical fertilizer, he brought in chickens and let them roam free. Free-range chickens would fertilize the grass; the grass would nurture the cattle, and shoppers at Whole Foods would love Harris's organic beef. ... But then, the eagles started to descend on Harris's farm. Eagles eat chicken. Eagles love chicken.
Since eagles are protected by law, the farmer wasn't allowed to hunt and clear the eagles from preying on his organic operation.
No good deed goes unpunished?
I think people forget that man's best friend became that way by doing jobs for us. Want your cattle and chickens protected from wolves, fox, eagles, etc? Train some dogs to protect them.
That being said I think an even very loose "netting" that can consist of simply rope criss-crossing with certain gaps can sufficiently dissuade eagles and even other prey birds.
At any given time I've got 3-5 bald eagles in the woods around my house. There are 3 houses with chickens in the neighborhood. The eagles won't go anywhere near a yard with a dog - I'm quite confident they aren't dumb enough to tangle with a large dog unless they have no other option for food.
I have no doubt if an eagle was starving to death it might tangle with the dog and might even win, but I don't think that would be their first, second, or fifth choice if there were other food options.
I've even heard of people using guardian geese instead of dogs. They're supposed to be very effective at preventing arial predation and orders of magnitude cheaper than dogs, though I've never heard anyone talk about them in the context of something the size of a bald eagle.
Unless you've actually got cattle you need herded and protected from wolves, pretty much any mutt over 60lbs is going to be good enough to keep the predators away. They'll also be happy to help the rabbits if you let them.
Now I don't know how this works with bald eagles, but there might be a similar solution for this.
Eagles have actually been trialled as an anti-drone defence [0]. Although this isn't actually a good idea in the long run. A serious attacker could flood an eagle with a drone swarm, or make drones (e.g. explody, sharper blades) designed to hurt / kill eagles. It also takes considerable time and patience to train an eagle compared with the ease with which drones can be replaced.
> "But Will is resourceful, you know. He keeps trying to cross that gap. At one point as we're driving around the farm, we're next to this field with some chickens in it. And there's a pickup truck coming the other way. Will stops the Jeep to talk to the driver of the truck...."
> "In the bed of the truck, there's a guy with a camera with this giant telephoto lens, which is apparently pretty common. People now come to Will's farm to see the eagles. He had this special Eagle Day a few days before I was there. He's even built cabins for people to rent out."
Basically, with fewer cars on the road for a large stretch of last spring, small critter populations would boom since automobile death is one of the leading modern causes of death in young critters.
With the population of small animals on the rise, predators would have more accessible food sources allowing their populations to rise over the following years.
I have no idea how this is holding up or whether its based in reality but I found it an interesting way to think about unintended consequences of a large shift in the modern way of living.
EDIT: Aaaand yep, there's the fourth egg. :)
Trees and trellises should help, but if you want a tiny dog and a big playground for your riding lawnmower, you're in for some disappointments.
I'm curious how many people assume the same, as it seems to have become descriptively defined as any wordplay based on a dual-meaning.
Typically, I'm a fan of nuanced definitions because it makes language more useful but, in this case, I'll probably keep using it the same way because I don't feel that the sexual requirement adds much value.
'Pun' probably works in most cases but not all puns are double-meaning and puns also have a cornier/less clever connotation IME.
Definitely worth the trip to stand within 10ft of several Eagles, and there are usually plenty of wild eagles within sight of there as well.
Not just one random eagle enthusiast, but a whole team of volunteers.
It was a holy F** moment for me as the bird was damn majestic and lot larger and intimidating than what I would expect from a bird.
Garuda - the hindi word for Eagle, is often described as the vehicle of Lord Vishnu, one of the powerful Hindu Gods. Bald Eagle would be perfect match for that job.
Also, in Cape Canaveral there is a nest on the way to the Apollo/Saturn V center. I was lucky to see one of the eagles resting on top of the building when I went to watch a Falcon 9 launch.
The aftermath looked like someone hit a feather pillow with a shotgun.
I wish the biohackers would bring back Haast's eagle.
Note: No intention of starting a political conversation, as a resident of said superpower I just love the irony.
Every animal needs to survive and will do anything to get by including scavenging. That’s nature. At this very moment, millions of things are getting eaten alive. Welcome to the brutality of Mother Nature.
It’s not very charitable to say something deeply provocative and putting a note to defend. It only reflects your prejudice.
Yea, and so do nations. The descriptors they used feel conformable describing both the nation and the mascot. It's not deeply provocative. It is a comparison that is interesting to read, because it describes how nations and animals can act similarly, but on difference scales.
Every division of the universe into distinct constituents is a completely made up concept by groups of humans, including “humans” and “groups” thereof.
One can spin it whatever which way.
but even letting this opinion aside, crows, magpies, and parrots can run loops around their "intelligence"
one can spin it in any way, but some ways are more shameless then others