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Hi all,
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Delia and I recreate in the summer by swimming from one park on Lake WA along the shore a little way to the next park and then back again.?
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I take about 20 strokes and then spyhop for a while to take stock of approaching danger.? What I?m thinking here is mainly speeding boats piloted by anyone from the Cleveland Indians pitching staff, that sort of thing.? (Boat speeders ?have killed one person on Lk. WA and one on Lake Tapps in the last year ).
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But it wasn?t a boat that got my heart rate going this time.? When I brought my head out of water my vision screen was filled by a huge adult Bald Eagle that was about 4 yards away from me gaining altitude but still only a couple feet above the water line, flying toward me but angling safely off to one side. ?It was a view of a Bald Eagle that removed my normal reaction of admiration and replaced it with a certain amount of panic, since I felt so slow and helpless in the water and the bird seemed so fast and so massively much bigger than me.?
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Delia saw the event from about 40 yards away.? She didn?t get a sense of peril (what does that tell you?) ?She saw an Eagle hovering very low over the water and at first didn?t see me there and then saw the bird suddenly dip down almost to the water with talons deployed, at which point she realized that I was right there because she saw my bright pink bathing cap (the waves were high today).? She said it was amazing how small my head looked compared to how big the bird looked, which replicated my feelings exactly.
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I?m reluctant to attribute things like this to mental or visual errors by the bird, but it did occur to me that my bright red bathing cap could look like a juicy spawning red Sockeye. It?s quite possible of course the Eagle had a fish in its sights that was very near where I was, who knows. I couldn?t tell if?she (I'm assuming) ?had payload because I wasn?t wearing glasses and was preoccupied, but Delia said the bird didn?t break the surface of the water, so maybe not.? Afterward, she?flew in high speed flapping flight off toward Bellevue.
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When I talk to folks about Bald Eagles, I realize that their real size, (a bird?s weight compared to a mammal?s weight doesn?t yield a meaningful comparison, since birds are engineered to be light) skill, ?speed, abilities and power are vastly underestimated by the non-birding public.?
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I got to see the bird today as its prey sees it?and underestimating it wasn?t an option.
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Thanks all,
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And oh, by the way---
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RACING NEWS SOON!
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JOIN THE YARDBIRDRACE?!
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?and help CONSERVE BIRDLIFE!
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(email me with at the yardbirdrace address with your 2009 year yard list)
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Ed Newbold ednewbold1 at yahoo.com or yardbirdrace at yahoo.com ?Beacon Hill , Seattle
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