Eagles

Bald eagles will eat most anything they can find, including carrion. They frequently fish, or when fishing near ospreys, will wait for the osprey to catch a fish, then beat the osprey up until it drops its catch, which the eagle will catch in mid air.

Winter cold freezes even our rivers, limiting open water for fish eagles to the rapid shallows. The osprey usually retreat to the estuaries and open ocean in our winter, but the bigger bald eagle still cruises the rapids of local rivers looking for either dead fish on or in the ice, or for that lucky moment when a fish flashes in the rapids.

We never saw eagles here in our youth, probably because our local rivers sported few fish, a consequence of sewage from adjacent towns. The sewage reduced the oxygen level to below that necessary for active fish. After sewage treatment plants solved that problem, the fish came back, and so did the osprey and eagles, both golden and bald. We've been spotting osprey and golden and bald eagles for more than a decade. Bruce, a friend, photographed this bald eagle, one of a pair, in a tree overlooking our Housatonic River just a few days ago, testimony to how quickly opportunistic eagles follow their dinner.