Monday, June 15, 2009

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it IS a bird!!!

Yesterday, my friend and I were sitting under a tree in a park with our dogs. Well, we were sitting there and our dogs were making sure they peed on every.single.blade of grass. Anyway, all of a sudden two juevanile eagles dived witinin 20 feet of us and I thought they were going for Pint so I started freaking out and yelling:

"Eagles! Where is Pint? Grab her. Grab her!! Eagles!!"

Luckily, Pint was right near my friend who grabbed her and handed her to me. Whew. But they were actually fighting over a fish and ended up dropping half a carcass within 5 feet of where we were sitting! I shit you not, my friend almost got hit by a dead fish!

Then four adult eagles swooped in and we got front row seats for a pretty exciting scuffle! I have never been so close to eagles before - not even when I went to Eaglefest in Haines. Seeing eagles up here is about as common as seeing rats in NYC, but being within a few feet of them as they fight over food and almost being hit by a dead, half eaten fish was CRAZY!

I've seen eagles at raptor centers before, but you don't see their wingspan when they are just sitting in a cage or on some post. Being a stone's throw away from six birds of prey while they are flapping around was one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile and definitely one of those 'only in Alaska' stories!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whatever...one time, in band camp, I saw a couple of velociraptors fight over the carcass of a megatherium.

Radioactive Tori said...

That is awesome. You live in such a cool place!