DIARY OF A HOME RENO WINO

DAY, “Swim like an eagle…”

I guess it’s rather apropos that I saw what I saw on this 4th of July weekend.

It was, in a word, amazing!

It was an eagle. A bald eagle to be exact.

But wait, there’s more!

I’m lucky to live not too far from a park that pretty much advertises for eagles to set up nest. The eagles have taken them up on the offer and, as a result, affords me the opportunity to witness eagles in all their wild eagle-ness without waiting on long lines or having to pay for parking.

Staring out over the Hudson River waiting and watching for all manner of wildlife has taught me a thing or two you simply can’t get from a book. For example, eagles have an unmistakable flying style (there must be an official name for “flying style” but as a mere voyeur, it’s not on the tip of my tongue).

On a human (or a horse), it’s the kind of thing we would refer to as “gait” or the manner in which a thing ambles from one place to the next. Many birds, both big and small, fly all the time, but nothing compares to the way an eagle does it.

Smaller fowl, for example, are quick and fluttery and indecisive. They act as though their minds change before they’ve even finished the very thought they are re-thinking. They dive and recover in a blink. They vacillate between using their wings as weapons, and politely putting them in their pockets while waiting their turn at a feeder full of seeds. They also scare easily, and when they have nothing else to do, they’ll just sit there. And sing.

An eagle, on the other hand, seems to do absolutely everything on purpose. There’s a certain regality about them. So much so, you often feel their presence before you see them commanding their route in the sky. Unlike other birds, eagles rarely seem to be joyriding the jet stream. They are constantly surveilling the earth below. At least that’s how it looks to me. Other birds on the river may be similarly sized, the heron comes to mind, or even a decent sized duck, yet, even from a great, peripheral distance, I can tell them apart with my naked eye.

Not to brag, but I can also perform a similar stunt with the smaller birds. I wouldn’t call myself a “bird whisperer” per se, but I can identify many manner of birds simply by their sound, much the same way a wine connoisseur can shove her nose inside a glass of red liquid and pull out a hearty, “Dark cherries, red currants, with just a hint of mushroom and….dirt.”

For example, Mourning Doves (which are basically “country pigeons” but I like ’em anyway) have an unmistakable tremble to their coo. If you hear them often enough, you’ll notice they roll their “r”s. The cardinals have a special bleep-type chirp used mostly when trying to let another cardinal know it’s time for lunch. Compare that to a hummingbird. Hummingbirds have a very chipper chirp, but are set apart by the soft, background noise created by their whirring wings as they blitz between blooms. In a sense, the hummingbirds bring their own orchestra to the party.

I’m not sure how many hours I’ve logged just watching eagles be eagles, but I can say we’re beyond the “honeymoon” phase.

In the beginning when I’d notice an eagle, my interest would last for a few seconds or so, and then I would continue about my day. As I came to appreciate them more, I’d stop whatever I was doing and watch an eagle being an eagle for as long as it would let me, often grabbing a camera so I could capture the moment for sharing or reliving later on.

As with any relationship, there came the time I saw the ugly side of an eagle — the equivalent of when your boyfriend is comfortable enough to leave his socks on the bathroom floor while peeing with the door open, or never shutting another drawer or cabinet in your house. I probably shouldn’t describe it as “ugly” since eagles are, by right, birds of prey, and prey is rarely willing to fill the role. I get it.

That day, though, I watched with both horror and awe as a veritable gang of eagles surrounded a duck who had become unwittingly corralled by a bevy of ice floats in the river. What ensued over the next few minutes was nothing short of a scene from “The Godfather” if only “The Godfather” had been produced by “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”.

The gang of eagles tortured this duck by taunting it, even forcing it under the freezing water a few times, the way Pablo Escobar’s minions might teach a mule a lesson, hand on the back of his head while hovering over a gas station toilet if the weight and the money didn’t match.

This game got old quick for these eagles and, eventually, one of them took the proverbial wheel and ate it — while it was still quacking for its life.

It took me a good while to stop feeling the vividness of the last moments of that dumb duck’s life. In time, I forgave them, and my respect for the eagle restored, thus placing me at the right place at the right time.

It happened the way it usually does. I sat quietly over coffee staring at the water as it ripples this way and that, when I noticed what I’ll describe as a commotion a ways up river. From where I sat, all I could tell was that something was on the surface of the water splashing around a bit. I grabbed the only pair of binoculars I own — a clunky, not great pair I swiped from my Dad when I bought this house — and confirmed my suspicion.

It was an eagle! It was waist deep in the water, something I’ve not seen before. I’ve witnessed eagles sitting in trees, surfing on ice floats and flying high, but I’ve never seen one going for a dip!

I pressed the blurry lens of the binoculars to one eye and just stared and stared while trying to figure out what this eagle was up to. To be clear, he was not sitting on the water like a duck. Ducks, with their rather horizontal bellies, are better built for, say, lounging or treading water than are eagles. This eagle had just its head and shoulders above water, as if he jumped from a cliff feet first, and then buoyed up for air.

Within seconds, the eagle un-submerged his wings and tapped the surface with them a few times. Was he drowning? I thought this to myself as I continued to watch from about a hundred yards, or so, away.

And then this eagle’s intentions came into focus.

The eagle began to SWIM.

He swam with the same unmistakable intention as an eagle does in flight. His big, bold wings exploding from beneath the surface, and then purposefully plunging back down into the water in what we humans call the “butterfly stroke” — both wings powered by shoulders strong enough to keep a bird in the air for hours the way they do. Each time its wings pushed the water behind him, the eagle propelled himself closer and closer to his destination. He never looked back, or down, or up, for that matter. His eyes were locked on where he planned to go.

From where I sat, I could see the eagle had his eye on the shore quite a distance away. I followed him with my binoculars as he swam at an amazing clip toward the eastern bank of the river.

Eventually, the trees were too plentiful, obfuscating my view and leaving me to wonder what happened next?

Why did the eagle decide to drop from the sky and swim to a shore so far away? This was not a dirty eagle’s bath time. This was a mission. I wondered, could he have been injured? Unlikely, given the speed and power with which he brought himself to shore. Was he holding something below the surface of the water rendering him too heavy to fly? That seemed more likely, but what would make that meal so important that he would risk being out of his element for so long to conquer it?

Was “he” not a “he” at all, but perhaps a mother eagle bringing food to her babies? Is that what compelled this eagle to make such an excruciating journey through an estuary with confused currents and thick blankets of lily pads coagulating between his catch and his destination? Were this the case, did she make it to shore with her meal? Or did she lose her grip after such a gallant effort and emerge empty-taloned and utterly exhausted?

My imagination took me to the script of disappointment recited by an eagle who has to explain to her hungry brood why she’s been gone so long, and still returned with nothing. “I’m sorry, but the carp was just too much for me. I tried! Really, I did. But not to worry. I’ll head back out in a few and find us a dumb duck. It’s all good…”

On the one hand, I feel almost cheated, as if I have two or three more pages until the end of the story.

On the other, there is a bit of magic in the questions left unanswered, isn’t there, because I now get to choose how this story ends.

And, so do you…