The bald eagle was perched high in the cottonwood tree that towers over the dugout where the fill for the hoghouse was bladed out at the northwest corner of the grove. He watched me, head turning slowly, as I came past with the tractor headed to the bale site where I would load up two bales to feed the cattle in the pasture as I did every day.
We have had a two week stopover from a pair of bald eagles each of the past ten years, usually in March, when the retreating snow cover reveals a number of carcasses of wild things and the occasional casualty from farm operations. They seem to be on the way somewhere, possibly the river bottom some thirty miles south of here, though I have never seen them take off in that direction. Their behavior while here reveals their essential nature as buzzards. At least while I have observed, they do not hunt while there is something available that is already dead. I can't say I even know what a hunting bald eagle looks like. I am, on the other hand, surrounded by hunting red tail hawks all season long.
But this eagle was alone. I did take the time to look for the mate. I pushed in the clutch and sat for awhile, scanning the grove carefully for sign of another perching bird of prey, but came up empty.
I have taken to paying much more careful attention to any change I see in the wild things surrounding me. These changes might include different species growing in the grove and odd ends of fields that generally get left alone. I have brought to mind that I regularly seed fescue with pasture and hay mixes, an idea my Dad would have scoffed at, knowing as he did that it would not succeed this far north. I have brought to my own notice the fact that I have fewer grassland birds and songbirds of any kind than he did. I have begun to assume that mostly because of our own behavior, we are in the midst of massive change-deterioration might be a better word-and we are not going to like where it brings us out. One eagle where there have been two is an alarm bell.
I wonder what else has changed or is changing that I have not yet noticed.
It is an ironic truth that I and a few others are becoming more acutely aware of the world around us, our plant and animal companions on our farms, just as they are fading because of the threat our way of living has put them under.
Perhaps I will see the eagle and his mate today. If I do not, and if the mate continues in its absence, I will have to question why it has happened. Obviously, animals die. But just as obviously it is not always because of age. If it is instead that change is making it impossible for them to live here, I will need to question myself, us all, and how we are living and farming. We cannot succeed on earth by pushing other species out.
