Looking, Waiting, Searching

The first time I saw a bald eagle, it swept over me where I stood, out in the open, on a “real estate tower.”

By design, these upper-level platforms are constructed to show prospective buyers an irresistible view. Birdwatchers agree — we see these things and it immediately registers as an original WPA project; we shove five dollars under a nearby tree and follow the path cut by the carpenter’s truck to the base of viewing platform. The stairs are steep, and nothing is enclosed. There are no walls, and the higher you go, the more the wood creaks. Erected near the swamp, at the north end of the pond, the platform made for excellent birdwatching.

On that cold January morning, I did not see the eagle until it was coming overhead, from behind. It cast a sudden, huge, alarming shadow, and we instinctively ducked. This action additionally startled us; as we were looking for cover, we were also looking down. So, slightly addled by vertigo, I caught only a glimpse of the massive bird before it soared too far and gone, bigger than anything I’d ever seen, down the pond corridor.

From train windows to the floor of the Grand Canyon, my bird journal fills with the times and places I observed bald eagles. If I was not alone, dates and locations make it possible for me to remember more, more than a photograph could, just a few words about the moment when I first saw that bird.

Eventually, seeing eagles would become common, and in 2016 I stopped making written entries about sightings. This does not mean seeing a bald eagle, or four of them — together, but at different altitudes, coursing the sky above the fields — ceased to thrill.

I, like any other patriotic birdwatcher, will sometimes analyze the nature of the bird and that of the nation. But I try not to judge the bird on such merits, and besides, I don’t know which birds fellow nations have chosen as representation.

The bald eagle is a crafty scavenger of imposing size and grace. The adults, with gleaming heads and brown velvet bodies, even as they tear into a raw deer carcass at the side of the road, bring us handsome evidence of a larger wilderness.

Just as the first sighting of a bird gets a mention, so would an outrageous or disheartening event. The cessation of bald eagle notes are in contrast to other birds, like the brown thrasher, the towee, the hermit thrush — sightings I stop recording because I’ve stopped seeing.

We still call this hobby birdwatching, yet so much time is spent looking, waiting, searching. Through binoculars, I watch an eagle as it comes gradually toward the pond. Another is closer and lower flying, searching for a lame goose or dead fish at the edge of the water.

I watch as the two land on a mudflat, and minor posturing ensues: One lifts off, then the other. They fly toward the large trees on the northwestern edge of the pond.

Sometimes, if you stare through binoculars too long, your eyes will play tricks on you. Convincing optical illusions are not out of the question.

Once, in Texas, what I mistook for a wetland of waving grasses was really a wetland with flocks and flocks of long billed curlews. I had never contemplated birds in that number, so I simply did not see them.

Now, as the eagles land in the distant tree, I adjust to watch their wingspan but am suddenly distracted by many feathered bodies already perched in the tree. Everywhere is an oblong, brown blur.

I lower my binoculars, rub my eyes; my heart is pounding in anticipation.

I climb the fence post for a better vantage point and then refocus. Because there is nowhere for my feet to gain a good purchase, I count, and recount, the statuesque birds. Four in one tree, seven in another. There are three on a low bow, but night is coming and it’s hard to tell.

I climb down, doing the math over a few times. Somehow, the number seemed so much smaller than the thrill in this narrow strip of wilderness.