A duckache tonight

Liz and I were waiting in heavy traffic on Riverside Drive tonight as we left the Truck Stop after fueling up her truck for the big return to college Monday. As we paused for a parade of semis to pass, I watched perhaps fifty or sixty assorted gulls wheeling over the river. There were herring gulls, great black backs and a mess of ring bills. They were just beautiful against the storm blown clouds and I wished aloud for a pair of binoculars and a safe place to park so I could try to sort them out and look for exotics.

As they drifted away east a gap opened in the traffic and I estimated whether I could safely exit or not. Suddenly a large bird, blacker than the gulls and seeming somewhat larger, sailed swift and silent downriver from the west. It reversed right in front of us and swooped like a bolt down toward the water. A pair of ducks we had not seen sprang up in panic and the big bird whirled away defeated.

It was a bald eagle.We were astonished. I was expecting maybe a stray cormorant or something. Not that eagles are terribly rare here but we don't usually get that close to them. It proceeded on east behind the gulls hot on the trail of a mess of mallards. Who knew that eagles eat ducks? We thought it was fishing.