I spent yesterday at Dungeness Spit and camped in the county campground
there. Not a shorebird to be found yet, although later saw a handful far
away near the 3-crabs restaurant. I was standing on the bluff above the
spit, just vacantly staring off into the horizon, wondering how in the world
so many early mariners missed something so large as the straights of Juan De
Fuca when I was startled by the sudden appearance of an immature eagle which
soared up on the breeze from below me on the bluff. It actually made me
jump, and the bird quickly dipped a wing and disappeared. After a minute or
so my heart rate returned to normal and I returned to gazing at the horizon
when the eagle came back in the same place. This time I did not spook and
the bird just soared there, about 6 feet away, eye to eye. We looked at each
other for a full minute, and I was admiring how the bird managed to stay in
place in the wind by just making small adjustments to its wing alignment. I
wondered what the eagle made of me, the green monkey with a hat? As we
looked each other in the eye I became aware of the vast gulf between our
lives and longed for a moment to grow wings and join in the effortless
soaring. Finally, with a tip of the wing the eagle dipped below my view
threshold. I waited for 45 minutes but it had enough of monkey gazing.

Later I watched 5 Northern Harriers dancing in the wind above a grassy
meadow area. Like the eagle they could ride the wind and stay in place, then
soar up into the wind, then bank the other way, using the wind as their
motor, and go scorching along the tops of the grass, easily 30mph, then pull
up and land on a dime.


Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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