In the summer of 2014 I visited a Bald Eagle’s nest I know of in Wasilla. I’d been going to visit a nest site a few hundred yards north of it for years, but that nest had been abandoned and storms had taken it apart. Now a new nest had been built in a cottonwood and a new pair of eagles was raising their first clutch of two eaglets. I spent an hour photographing the birds, that first visit, with the dad sitting on a branch above the nest, waiting for his mate to return with food for the two hungry youngsters. I was just about to leave when the eaglets started calling in their high-pitched, squeaky voices, denoting they had spotted mom. I swung the camera up just in time to catch her coming in, a salmon clutched in her talons.
I noticed something odd about that salmon, and when I zoomed in on it, I saw that its head had been neatly sliced off. Either the eagle had managed to pinch the salmon from someone fishing at the nearby lake, or someone was leaving the food out where the eagle could take it. If someone was indeed feeding the eagle, they did not realize that the eaglets needed the protein in the salmon’s brains to help them develop properly at this important time when they were nestlings. I hoped the eagles were also able to bring intact salmon to their offspring.
I returned in early summer of 2015, eager to see how the eagle pair were fairing. They had successfully raised their two offspring to fledge the previous year, and I hoped the best for them with this next nest. My first visit was late in May, and though I spent an hour there, with my camera on a tripod on the road below the nest site, I didn’t get a glimpse of the nestlings. They were too tiny to be able to be seen above the rim of the deep nest. Dad was sitting on one of the bare limbs next to the nest, where he was able to watch his offspring, while keeping an eye out for his returning mate. I was hoping to photograph her arrival, but I was on a tight schedule, and couldn’t stay at the nest any longer. I had to be satisfied with only photos of dad, keeping vigil.
On another visit in May I again waited over an hour, hoping for photos of mama eagle coming in, but she had apparently just fed the youngsters and had gone off again to hunt for fish. Near the end of the hour a magpie suddenly arrived and landed on a branch near where dad was sitting on the bare limb of the cottonwood. Dad snapped to attention as the cheeky magpie jumped from branch to branch, taunting the eagle-a bird many times its size. The smaller bird knew that the eagle could not catch it because it was more nimble and agile. As the magpie darted around the eagle, the raptor snaked its head out towards the magpie, snapping at it as it flew by. I had switched my camera to video, and got amazing footage of the interplay between these two birds before the magpie finally tired of the ‘game’ and flew off. From their actions, I surmised that this was not the first time the magpie had played this game with its giant partner, who appeared not to be amused.
I wasn’t able to get to the nest again until July 7th, and then I received an astonishing shock. The parents, by this time, had moved to another cottonwood, to give the growing eaglets more room in the nest. I alternated photographing the nestlings and walking down the road to photograph dad where he sat on a bare limb of another cottonwood. Mom was off hunting. After about half an hour, the eaglets started calling and two heads raised up above the rim of the huge nest. Then- I noticed a movement over to the left of the two eaglets. Could it be? Things got lively as mom came in to the nest with a salmon. I was standing on the east side of the nest, where too many tree limbs were obscuring the action in the nest. I walked back up the road where I could get a clearer view. As I turned and set up the camera, mom was busy tearing small pieces from the fish and delicately holding the bits for each eaglet to reach up and take from the end of her massive bill. She fed one, then the other. And then, I was stunned to see mom turn to her right and hold out a piece of fish towards her third eaglet! Three eaglets! This is very rare. There has to be a good supply of reliable food for an eagle pair to attempt to raise three eaglets to fledge. Usually, if they lay three eggs and they all hatch, one will be starved out while the other two will flourish, for there simply won’t be enough food to feed all three. But at this nest, while the third eaglet was slightly smaller than its two siblings, all three were healthy, and-by this late in the season-it was evident that the parents were able to bring in enough food to raise all three to fledge.
Thinking about it later, I theorized that the eagles were able to get a reliable food source from whomever was leaving fish for them the previous summer, and with that extra food they had gambled on laying three eggs in this year’s clutch. And it payed off, for each time I visited the nest the rest of the summer and until the eaglets started to fledge, I saw that all the eaglets were healthy and strong. That is quite an accomplishment for the parents, and I salute them. It’s not easy to keep two eaglets well fed, and feeding three meant that the parents had taken turns hunting and bringing in food tirelessly for many weeks, in all kinds of weather. It’s an amazing feat, and the rareness of the occurrence of three eaglets speaks to its difficulty. Now the test will be to see if the adult eagles will repeat the procedure next summer. That would speak to the true reliability of that supplemental food source.
I will return there, and give my report. It’s truly an honor to have a nest next to a road where one can drive up and observe without disturbing the birds. There’s a quiet neighborhood there, with not much traffic going by. The people who live along that dirt road are respectful of the eagle’s nest. In the distance is the noise of the city and the eagles have become acclimated to their chosen site. The adult sitting watch next to the nest when I arrived usually clacked a warning at me as I carefully exited my vehicle, but once the eagle realized I was not a threat, it largely ignored me for the duration of my visit. When the eaglets grew large enough to sit on the rim of the nest, stretching and flapping their wings, they watched me intently, with the curiosity of young birds. But they soon lost interest when I did nothing more than stand with my camera aimed at them, watching quietly. They returned to searching the sky for the first sight of a parent coming in with food- the highlight of their existence.
I had the pleasure of living near a nest when I lived in Homer, and was able to watch the two eaglets from that nest fledge and learn the tricky business of flying. Sometime I might tell the stories from that nest. Because of that experience, I knew what these eaglets were going to be facing. The parents at that Homer nest had also laid three eggs, but they weren’t able to supply the three hatchlings with enough food and one of the eaglets starved. The other two thrived to fledge and I was able to witness their very first flight. I wish I could have watched the three Wasilla eaglets take their first flight, as well. When I visited the nest on July 29th, there were two eaglets. One had fledged already. The other two were busy stretching and flapping their wings, and I knew they would be taking that courageous first step off the edge of their nest any day now. I wished them a long, healthy life.
Story and photos by Robin Song
