Breath taking...

 Bald Eagles have been making themselves visible lately. I see them perched in the barren hardwood trees across the road from my vantage point where I work. They catch my attention by swooping into the field and back up to their perch. Their stark white heads and tails are incandescent and unmistakable. 

 When I am out doing chores, the air is so cold it makes my teeth ache, I often hear them cry. In movies and on television, they rarely use sound effects that are actual eagle calls when they show eagles. To some, their voice does not sound as majestic as they think it should, so they substitute the cry of the red-tailed hawk.   I disagree with those people. The high-pitched piping tone is a sound born of water and air, unforgettable once you know it.

                                                                                    iStock photo Ray Hennessy
My visiting daughter said, "There's a dead animal over there." It was in a spot I couldn't see well from my seat. When I looked, I saw a flock of crows and a dark smudge interrupting the snow. When I had a break in the day, I put Bravo on a leash, stuffed my feet into boots, and went to investigate. The snow wasn't deep, only four inches or so, with a thin crust of ice over the top, unblemished, reflecting the late afternoon light up so brightly I wished I had sunglasses on. Bravo was delighted with our impromptu adventure, crunching through the snow and smelling all the smells. He froze when he got the first scent of the dead deer ahead. 

It was a good-sized doe; not much was left of her except her head, hide, and long, delicate legs. The rest had been hollowed out like a shell, the rib bones half-eaten. Coyotes, eagles and other birds had feasted upon her. It made me glad that I choose to lock the goats up tight inside their Cozy at night. As sad as it was to see the remnants of this doe, it would break my heart if it were one of my chubby, spoiled goats. 

A fine car drove past my house twice, three times, then parked near the end of my driveway. A young couple got out with a camera and long lens, a rig that cost four times what I paid for my first vehicle. I could see by their movements how excited they were to see the eagles; they stayed and watched for a long time, doubtless taking hundreds of pictures. 

As a child in the sixties, DDT nearly decimated the Bald Eagle population in New England. I checked Rachel Carson's Silent Spring out of the library and read it tucked in my bed one summer night while trucks trundled down our little street spraying for mosquitos. I inhaled that fog while I learned about the decimation of songbirds and the thin eggshells of the birds of prey. My tender heart ached.

I was well into my thirties and living in the mid-south before I saw an eagle flying free at Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. Now, back in New England, I see them regularly, sometimes perched on a tree on our property or swooping over our meadow. It takes my breath away every time.