A lot of people think that these regal birds live high in the Rockies or very mountainous terrain. They suppose that their graceful flight and strong wings would help them sore into the high cliffs with ease. Their grandeur from a distance doesn’t really capture the character of these majestic looking birds.
Little do they know.
Their song is tiny like a songbird in your backyard, not the Hollywood dub of the majestic Red Tail Hawk.
They are opportunists…and they’re lazy. They’ll take food already killed or caught, whether by another predator, fishing nets, or a fish flopped onto a bank dying.
Benjamin Franklin even preferred the Turkey as a much more refined and grand protector than the mooching Bald Eagle. And it doesn’t steal food from another predator and claim it as his own.
Franklin…expounded on the turkey comparison: “For the truth, the turkey is a much more respectable bird…a true original Native of America who would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farmyard with a red coat on.” unremembered history.com
And he was correct.
Once in a while, however, nature takes revenge.
But wait…there’s more!
Add to these little nuggets, they also permeate the flat environment of the Midwest – far from the lofty mountain ranges further west. I have seen more where I live now than anywhere else in the country.
As graceful as they appear in flight, they aren’t on take-off. Think what it’s like to try to run from a dead stop carrying a 50 pound sack of grain….
Storytime!
A few weeks ago as I was driving along a back country highway along fairly low lying hills, I saw a Bald Eagle feasting on road kill lying in the middle of the road. Another car was driving in front of me and came close to the huge bird.
Unlike other prey animals, this one decided to wait until the car was almost on top of him before deciding the approaching car really wasn’t going to slow down for him to complete his mid-morning snack. So he lifted his giant wings and started flapping. And flapping. And flapping.
In all reality, it looked like a 747 Jumbo jet trying to take off from a tiny private plane runway.
Waving his massive wings as hard as he could, he weaved in and out of the direct path of the oncoming car. For all that effort, he was not gaining much height off the road.
Finally, finally, he gained enough altitude to reach the top of some small trees on the opposite side of the pavement.
Oh, what a stroke of pure genius! He didn’t care that the driver barely managed to hit the brakes in time. Because, really, the Bald Eagle couldn’t possibly be bothered with such trivial things as a several thousand pound car colliding with his 10 pound birdie body!
Especially when that bird was clearly just trying to eat his dinner in peace!
(Side note: Did you know that Bald Eagles weren’t even officially the American mascot until President Joe Biden signed it into law December 24, 2024…..248 years after the founding…and all this time using it as the “Official Mascot” for the United States of America? Yeah. It took that long.)