Obsidian Wings

Bird of the Day: Bald Eagle

by Doctor Science

Yesterday morning I spent about an hour along the Raritan River in central NJ. The river is less than 50m wide at that point, so it's possible to look at every one of the several thousand Canada Geese present, trying to find a rare goose (Cackling, Snow, White-Fronted, etc.) mixed in, even if (like me) you're only carrying pretty light-weight binoculars. No dice this time, but I did see an adult Bald Eagle flying up the river and onto a perch on the other side. This picture:

taken along the Raritan last year by Flickr user magarell gives a good idea of the view, though I had no golden glow of sunset.

As I looked at the bird I exclaimed with joy, and told a runner passing by, "It's a Bald Eagle!" The great thing about adult Bald Eagles is that even a binocularless mundane can recognize them, because they're so large, clearly marked, and familiar from pictures. Which is one reason Ben Franklin was full of it, wanting to make the turkey our American symbol. Sorry, Ben, Wild Turkeys are just *creepy* -- they move like velociraptors.

I started birding in 1969, when Bald Eagles were almost extirpated in the US outside of Alaska. The birds have made an incredible comeback, so that even NJ, once down to a single nest, now has more than 100 nesting pairs. My instincts are still set on "really rare! see it while you still can!", though, for Peregrine Falcons and Ospreys as well as for Eagles.

And yes, it's really true that these birds, already threatened, were driven to the brink by DDT. It's unspeakably exasperating to have to say this, but if you've heard that DDT had nothing to do with the Bald Eagle's near-extinction it was a lie. Not a mistake, not a different scientific opinion, a lie. The most assiduous spreader of that lie is anti-environmentalist Steven Milloy; Tim Panogos Ed Darrell is exhaustively documenting and refuting the cloud of untruths Milloy keeps squirting out.

Why does Milloy keep doing this? Probably mostly because there's money in it, but I also couldn't help noticing something he said, which I've seen picked up and repeated elsewhere in the FoxNewsOSphere:

Banning DDT wasn’t about birds. It was about power.

This reminded me of something Gandalf says about Sauron (in the book Fellowship of the Ring; like most of Tolkien's more elegant phrasings, it didn't make it into the movie):

For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts.

I don't know how to counteract this kind of poison when the perpetrators don't have a One Ring that can be destroyed. What would it take for people like Milloy to lose their megaphones? Or at least to be laughed at and ignored, instead of requiring time and energy to counteract?

White-Headed Sea Eagle or Bald Eagle from John James Audubon's Birds of America. You can read Audubon's text about the Eagle here . He agreed with Franklin that the Bald Eagle's habit of stealing from the Fish Hawk (Osprey) made the bird

by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the King Birds from our country; though exactly fit for that order of knights which the French call Chevaliers d'Industrie

-- that is, Captains of Industry, businessmen.

The Running of the Deer

by Doctor Science

Last week (more or less) included my husband's birthday, and for his celebratory dinner I made Juniper-Spiced Venison with Brown Goat Cheese Sauce[1]. The crowd went *wild* -- it may have been the best venison any of us have ever had [2], and it was certainly the tenderest wild-caught venison I've ever encountered.

I realize that I generally count as one of the "anti-gun" crowd, so it may surprise you to learn that I have no objection to hunting per se. On the contrary: I support local hunters as much as possible. I don't hunt, but that's for lack of hand-eye coordination and depth perception -- I pose no danger to the broad side of a barn.

The reason I support hunters is because I'm a serious lifelong birdwatcher. I've asked around, and I've never known a serious birder who was categorically opposed to hunting, even the vegetarians.

Peregrine Falcons (aka Duck Hawks aka Great-Footed Hawks), by John James Audubon. Red in beak and claw, in this case.

5 years on

by liberal japonicus

Not the usual Friday open thread. Andy Olmsted's father posted a comment on the thread about grief, and noted it has been 5 years since Andy was killed by a sniper along with Capt. Thomas Casey. If you've come to ObWi since then and are not aware of who Andy was, you might want to check out the links in the top right sidebar. I wrote to Andy's father and the main paragraph was this:

I was a regular commenter when your son was posting and moved to the front page in large part because of a desire to try and maintain the community that he and the others helped build. I know there is nothing I can say that can take away even a small part of your pain, but I hope that letting you know that even though I only had a small glimpse of Andy, I miss him too, might be of some small comfort. 

Andy's dad also noted that the book where Andy's blogposts are collected is available and Andy's last post was included in Sian Price's book "If You're Reading This...: Last Letters from the Front Line", and here is a video interview with her.

In Japan, memorial services are held at specific intervals. Those intervals vary from sect to sect, but the idea of something scheduled is something that I now realize is something important, a way to shift grief from an individual burden that people are expected to bear to something built into the social fabric. 

I know, not much of an open thread, but what I'm thinking about now.