A few weeks ago I noticed a bald eagle chasing away vultures to stake a claim on a dead raccoon that was probably minding his own business when he met two headlights and a whole lot of steel.
I was disappointed thinking, hey wait a minute you’re the symbol of our country, you can’t be eating roadkill, you need to be plucking other birds from the sky and fish from lakes. My disappointment carried into a lunch time conversation between friends when I was enlightened. “That Eagle is pretty smart,” my friend said, followed by, “Why should it burn all that energy seeking live prey when its right there. Its survival of the fittest and smartest.”
I had completely forgot about that feathered event until yesterday my neighbor said she saw an eagle on top of a tall pine. Armed with my binoculars I sought to verify her sighting. Osprey, which led me to give her a short course on raptor identification.
For the last 15 years I have had the pleasure of working outdoors, although during the summertime I question my sanity as its extremely hot and humid. Most of what I do involves looking at the ground. I hardly never looked up until I happened across the book, On The Wing to the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon written by Alan Tennant. Basically the book is about Alan and an old time pilot George attaching a satellite tracking device on a peregrine falcon and following it from Texas to Alaska and then down into South America in their Cessna. After reading Alan’s book I always look up!
Drove my kids crazy for a few weeks always pointing out hawks and osprey, soon they got addicted to looking up. My oldest son will be sitting quietly in the truck and then blurt out, “Look Osprey!” Heart skipping I ease myself back onto the road and give him the “stare” followed by a, “Thanks for sharing but you almost killed us.”
After reading Alan’s book I discovered that I was enjoying only half of our planet and looking up into the skies was a brand new experience for me that I now enjoy everyday. I think of it like having a giant fish tank in the sky, watching the birds fly around, swoop, catch thermals, dive and perch is therapeutic and life just sort of stops for a moment just like when you peer into a fish tank.
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