I saw a bald eagle yesterday soaring over the Buzzards Bay shoreline, clearly identified by its awesome wing span with striking white head and tail.
As our largest and most impressive local bird of prey, it is nevertheless an enigma to many bird watchers how such a carnivorous raptor could have been selected by our founding fathers as the national symbol of a peace loving country.
The winged symbol permeates almost every federal event, announcement, and public occasion, and a clue to the reasoning behind its selection can easily be found on the back of a one-dollar bill. In one talon the eagle clasps thirteen arrows, closely united as the solidarity of the Iroquois Federation, much admired by architects of our own new government. In the other talon is a branch of olive leaves as a universal symbol of friendly intentions to balance out a two-fisted show of both peace and strength.
However, in actual aerial behavior, the bald eagle might be said to soar on gossamer wings of evil intention with a bad habit of stealing fish from the osprey, who is better at catching them with light hollow bones able to dive completely under water and then surface holding its catch with curved claws, head first for aerodynamic efficiency. At speeds of up to one hundred miles an hour, the eagle can knock the osprey’s prize out of its grasp to then catch it before it hits the water.
Because of this bad behavior, Benjamin Franklin advised against selecting the eagle for such an honorary title, as a thief stealing others’ food, keeping a messy dead fish smelling eerie, and a coward often letting a much smaller territorial king bird chase it away from its own imperial perch.
Instead, Franklin nominated the wild turkey for a profile of clean living and a reputation of quietly minding its own business. But his suggestion was turned down because turkeys become rattled when felt threatened with danger, flying scatterbrained in all directions, not deserving to take wing as a symbol of national fortitude. So, the eagle remains to this very day, with questionable credentials.
We all have our own personal opinion about the interpretation of what is and what is not acceptable in human behavior and, through anthropomorphism, we often project those mortal values into the lives of animals that share the environment with us.
When rising sun of spring brings the welcome dawn through our windows looking at the osprey nest platforms of our nearest neighbor, I hope my narrative and image of the eagle painted for you does not materialize with the first light of day.
By George B. Emmons