An eagle’s nest atop a tree on Birch Island. Photo contributed by Sandy Stott
Fall’s arrival always carries a retrospective feel, and a recent float on our common waters called back this fleeting summer story from a few years ago …
By the time I push my kayak off from Harpswell’s Lookout Point, the predicted winds are already hurrying across the bay, and the water has roughened to a sharp chop. Two wash overs sluice over boat in the first 10 yards, bringing both a frisson of excitement and the realization that the slant-crossing of this first mile is going to be work. But once across, I’ll be in the wind-shadow of Birch Island and, after easing along its mile length, I’ll have only a short crossing to Little Iron and the eagle’s nest I’ve been visiting since April.
Confession: “Work” seems the wrong word for the slow pleasure of riding this live water. I arrive at Birch in just 25 minutes, salt-flecked and smiling.
The wind wraps around the south end of Birch, and presses its hand to my back as I ease north along the shore. The tide is also with me, and I am here at the fall equinox, so life feels aligned today amid these Maine islands.
Even from a quarter-mile away, I can see the nest’s dark bulk. But as I draw near, I can also sense its emptiness. No totem bird sits atop the host oak, no dark wings cross the sky; it feels the way your room did when you left home for school or to marry.
For months, I have approached slowly, sensing for and keeping to some perimeter of eagle comfort. Across those yards, I have watched the eagle parent on duty as he or she has watched me, and since late May, I’ve watched also for the periscope of the eaglet’s head as it swiveled first this way, then that, scanning for the next meal.
In June, I first heard a mewling sort of complaint and figured it was the eaglet learning the skill of tantrum. But closer attention said it was the perched parent who, perhaps, was voicing the truth of parent-exhaustion: “Hungry, he is always hungry; I’ve barely slept since the hatch.”
In July, the mewling became keening, and now it came from the nest. “More,” it seemed to say, “When is more?” I began to think that this eaglet was especially slow to drop his diminutive and get on with his bald life. The parents sat stoically on either side, waiting. “Time to get out on your own,” their indifference seemed to say, even as biologists will tell you that the parents continue to feed their young for five to 10 weeks after they fledge.
In the nest that day, a small ruckus ensued, and a stick flew up and out, bounced once on the ledge and splashed into the water; the head reappeared. “More now?” it seemed to say. “No more now” was the answer. The eaglet hopped to a branch, flapped once in demonstration. One parent lifted off, flew twice around the nest and settled back on the tree. “See,” she seemed to say. Fledging couldn’t be far away, I thought.
Then, they were gone. Perhaps even the rodents on nearby islands sensed the eagles’ absence and got a little cockier in their foraging; perhaps all the little life in the area exhaled. The absence was palpable — so much there, then not there.
Today, I nose up to the rocks and go ashore on the iron-rusted, guano-streaked orange ledge and grab bayberry bushes to haul myself up the 15 feet to the narrow ridgeback of the island. Beneath the nest, there’s a litter of discarded or failed sticks as thick as my thumb. Amid the litter there’s a rodent skull — unlucky weasel? — and some tufts of duck feathering. The oak lists a bit seaward with its hundreds of pounds of first-year nest, but they seem securely matched, 40-foot tree and 4-foot nest, set for some duration.
Decades beyond my early habit of tree-climbing, I shinny and stretch to reach a first branch and then pull myself aloft, ponderously, precariously. I get up the 25 feet, and then I’m stooped under the woody bulk, nose wrinkled at the fug of leftover eagle life drifting down.
I tug a few of the sticks; most are solid. But the overhang’s too severe, and I give up on my summer-long fantasy of climbing in. “What would it be like to be in an eagle’s nest?” I’ve wondered.
I look out across Middle Bay in its broad fall sparkle. I am no eagle, but here at the equinox, balanced for a moment before crossing back toward the close rooms of winter, I can see like one.
Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.
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