Renee and Carolyn,

On June 13 you wrote:

>On 9 June 1996, I observed an apparent predation on a crow by
>a bald eagle.

Sorry for the delay in response. No other excuse than life itself.
I've been observing Bald Eagles around the Seattle area for the past eight
years. Last year I witnessed the adult male of the Discovery Park nesting pair
deliver a live nestling crow to one of the recently fledged young. The crow
was not fully feathered. The male eagle was only gone from his nest for about
two minutes and while out of sight a loud ruckus by crows could be heard from
the direction the eagle had flown in. I don't know if he raided a nest or
found a prematurely fledged crow.
This year the adult female of the same eagle pair (no guarantee this is the
same female as last year but also no reason to believe she's not...) arrived
at the nest with a completely black bird, body size, legs and feet consistent
with a crow (didn't see a head) and fed it to the two eaglets.
Last year, while observing the eagles and talking to park visitors, one person
told me he'd seen a flying adult eagle, being dive-bombed by crows. The eagle
flipped over in mid-air and snatched one of the offending crows with one
talon, apparently used both talons to pull either feathers or whole wings off,
then dropped the body in a wooded area.
I know that over the years, I've seen different female eagles in Discovery
Park react totally different to crows mobbing them.
The first adult female to nest in the park, when perched away from the nest,
would get totally "bent out of shape" any time one or more crows mobbed her.
She would scream, dodge and twitch her wings until finally leaving her perch
and fly to the nest. Once at the nest she would still call, but not "flinch"
at mobbing crows.
One of the things that helped convince me that the adult female in the park in
1991 was a different female (there were other things too), was her totally
different reaction to crows. Instead of screaming and "fleeing" to the nest
when mobbed, she would sit and "glower." When crows got "relaxed" she would
give chase and several times I saw her get within inches of nabbing a crow in
mid-air. That year I noted unidentified black bird, large enough to be crow,
being served to the eaglets on three separate occasions.

As for fledged crows this year; at Green Lake people have been experiencing
the frantic "attacks" by "concerned" adult crows near fledglings on the ground
for the past two weeks.

Martin Muller, Seattle
martinmuller at msn.com