Occasionally I've watched a pair of eagles double-team a flock of coots. One hovers while the other swoops down on a likely victim. The victim dives, then the first eagle rises up to hover while the second swoops down just as the victim comes up for air. It only takes a couple of exchanges before the victim is too out of breath to dive again. Bingo. Lunch. Initially, I always feel sorry for the victim, but then remember counting coots in mid-winter: four hundred and one, four hundred and two, three, four.... I think there are enough coots.

Catherine Alexander
Lakewood Neighborhood
South Seattle

-----Original Message-----
From: sonjabruce at hotmail.com
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu; GuttmanB at evergreen.edu
Sent: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Drama on the lake today

Last year I saw some eagles having the same trouble fishing on Lake Washington here in Seattle. Like your birds they turned their attention to the other birds on the lake, in this case gulls, with a much different result. Instead of dropping onto a group one dropped on a single bird and then held it under water for 3 or 4 minutes till it was drowned. He/she then took it into a nearby tree to tear it apart limb by limb, or should I say wing by wing, much like the lions probably took apart the Christians. It was one of the most spectacular "displays of nature" I'd ever seen. Bruce Lagerquist Seattle,Wa sonjabruce at hotmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Guttman,Burton To: tweeters at u.washington.edu Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006 2:22 PM Subject: [Tweeters] Drama on the lake today
This morning one of our local Bald Eagles created a lot of excitement for the Coots here on Long Lake outside Lacey. For a while, the eagle seemed to be fishing, hovering over the lake and occasionally diving, but it never caught anything. We have at least 200 Coots on the lake, as usual, and after a while the eagle turned its attention to them, chasing the flock hither and thither, forcing them into the reeds or under some overhanging trees. Now and then the eagle perched for a while, then took up the chase again. I never saw it catch a Coot, and it's gone now. I would have thought that by diving into a closely packed raft, it could easily catch one, but it didn't. I felt sorry for the little coots, but also for the hungry eagle. I'm reminded of the story of the woman who took her little boy to a movie about Roman times, including a scene where they were throwing Christians to the lions (did that ever really happen?), and the boy started to cry. So she naturally tried to!
comfort him--it's just movie, they aren't really killing people, and so on--and he said, "Mommy, that poor little lion ain't got no Christian!" Burt Guttman The Evergreen State College Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503
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