Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I was up early (because of the cat), showered, and heading out to the gym and a doctor's appointment. cattitude was walking with me, just to walk.

We saw a great blue heron and two egrets on the salt marsh, with a third egret perched in a tree. Also the usual coterie of ducks. I was most of the way through the park when I realized I had left some essential paperwork home, so we headed back, by a different path.

Then we spotted an eagle. A moment later, there were two eagles circling, then three. We stood and watched them for a nice long time, until one flew off to the south and the other two spiraled back north.

Some of you may consider this pedestrian, but I live in New York City and had never seen three bald eagles at the same time before.

The gym itself went okay: I upped weights on a couple of machines, didn't do well on the crunches, and had to stop with enough undone that I could go back tomorrow and have a fine workout without repeating any weight work from today.

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I saw one of the eagles this morning, high up, over the hill behind the soccer field. We watched for a bit, against a clear blue sky on a gorgeous morning. cattitude wasn't quite sure it was an eagle, until the first crow showed up--and looked small by comparison. We stood, and watched, and other people were doing the same. We talked to a few of them about the eagles, and to one about other birds: he's particularly delighted by the swallows that swoop and dart over that field, hunting insects. We didn't go on until the eagle disappeared behind a ridge.

There are four bald eagle chicks, about 8 or 9 weeks old, in hacking boxes (that's a falconry term--basically, it means they're in 6-by-6-by-6 boxes), on a platform in the tree canopy in Inwood Hill Park. (That's the park across the street from me, for anyone coming in late.)

The goal is to reintroduce the bald eagle to Manhattan. We went to a talk by the falconer working on the project, yesterday.

Many people apparently think the idea is crazy--but, he says, they said the same thing about Washington, D.C., and there are now two bald eagle nests in the District of Columbia, near the Capitol building.

Anyhow.

These are third chicks from eagle nests in Wisconsin. It's rare for three chicks to survive from a clutch, so this gives them a better chance of making it to fledging than they otherwise had.

We were warned not to expect much: most bald eagle chicks don't live through the first year.

If all goes well, though, we will have eagles in Manhattan. The red-tailed hawk who is nesting nearby is likely to harass them, but not successfully: a female bald eagle has a 6- to 7-foot wingspan. (Males are about a third smaller, in this and most raptor species.)

They're being fed fish, which is definitely a normal bald eagle diet, in the hope that when they start flying and seeking their own food, they'll keep fishing. (They have easy access to the Hudson River.) On the other hand, they might decide that rats, or ducks, or even (he warned us) swans look tasty.

Bald eagles don't breed until they're four or five years old--but if an adult eagle sees these, she's more likely to decide to nest in the area. And they might decide to return when they're old enough, if all goes well and they make it that far. The plan is to bring in four chicks a year for four or five years.

The most visible sign of the project, at the moment, is a fenced area in the hills, with a sign saying "Endangered species" and warning that they're protected by state and federal law. The area will be "closed indefinitely", but August is a likely end-date for that.

The eagles will be getting telemetry, and a Web cam.

Birdly goodness indeed. The peregrines have been a great success in the city (though their traditional nest sites in the Palisades are now occupied by owls); the Canada geese have rebounded so successfully that they're considered a pest by many people; there's room for bald eagles here again.