BY ANGUS PHILLIPS
Special to The Washington Post
Autumn is for the birds. Usually that includes a big, fat, farm-raised butterball turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Can you imagine one of those things flying? They'd have the approximate glide ratio of a bowling ball.
Perhaps the most distinctive flight pattern of a wild big bird is the bald eagle's. The untrained eye can't easily distinguish a distant eagle from a turkey vulture (buzzard) or a large hawk, but once you've seen a few in flight, you'll recognize the eagle's long wings and unique, upturned wingtips.
Into our lives came a pair of mature bald eagles recently when they established a nest in a snaggly tree behind the Radowskis' house, 150 yards or so from our front porch. The Riddles and Samorajczyks from across the street quickly spread the word. 'Have you seen our eagles?' asked Barbara Samorajczyk, out walking Maggie the water dog.
It makes sense. The little Maryland community of Annapolis Roads sits on a peninsula separating tidal Lake Ogleton from the Chesapeake at the mouth of the Severn River. From the eagles' high perch in the middle of the peninsula, they overlook both bodies of water, including a wide swath of shallow water on the Chesapeake side much favored by ospreys all summer.
The ospreys depart for points south in the fall, leaving their rich fishing grounds to the eagles to plunder. Many fish leave, too, but evidently enough stay behind to feed a pair of big birds and, we hope, their nestlings next spring.
The recovery of bald eagles is quite a story. We almost lost the national bird in the 1960s, when the number of nesting pairs fell to just more than 400, by official estimate. A century of hunting, then habitat loss, had taken a toll. Then the pesticide DDT nearly finished the job, weakening eagle eggs to the point they were no longer viable.
Bald eagles were declared an endangered species in 1967. When DDT was banned in 1972, it sparked a speedy recovery for a host of birds, including eagles and ospreys. By 1995, bald eagles were upgraded from endangered to threatened status, and in 2007, when some 10,000 nesting pairs were counted, they were removed from the threatened list.
Why are they called bald? It turns out that back in the day, bald meant white, not hairless. That's why wigeon, wild ducks that also have pale head feathers, are known colloquially as baldpates. See? You learn something every day.
Our bald eagles built a rag-tag dwelling of dry sticks. They spend most of the day soaring around, then in the evenings come back home to roost. That's when I like to walk my water dog, Nellie, stopping in front of the Radowskis' to catch a glimpse of our eagles, safely ensconced for the night in the rosy glow of sunset.
How, you might wonder, can the same person who takes pleasure in watching eagles and ospreys, who spends his dwindling after-tax money on black-oil sunflower, millet and thistle seed to feed the songbirds, then march out in November and hoodie dress shoot wild doves, woodcock, quail, geese and ducks?
The short answer is, a fellow's got to eat. The longer answer is, we like everything about wild birds, including the way they taste.
To that end, we had the extended family in at Thanksgiving for wild Canada geese, slow roasted in a garlic, vegetable and whiskey marinade. They were fresh as sunshine. My son and low cut dress I had bagged them a week ago at Sherman Baynard's farm on the Eastern Shore, accompanied by young Luke Sultenfuss, who at 12 embodies the best of the next generation of bird lovers and hunters.
'Wait till you meet my professional duck and goose caller,' said Baynard when we arrived at dawn. While we tugged on waders, he drove across the cornfield to pick up Luke, who lives at the farm next door with six siblings. The freckle-faced lad looked like he'd just stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
I asked if he played any sports. 'We do 4-H,' said Luke. 'It's one or the other, there's no time for both.'
Among his many 4-H projects, he raises ducks, which means in 12 years he's listened to more duck chatter than most people hear in a lifetime. That experience played out melodically when he raised a duck call to his lips. Out came the most astonishingly accurate duck music I've ever heard. Luke sounds like a knot of ducks feeding contentedly, while occasionally singing out to their far-flying kin to come on down and join the fun.
He's not bad on a goose call, either. He said he'd already won one local calling competition and was second in another.
On Saturday, the geese and superhero dress up ducks proved compliant. A strong wind was blowing from the northwest, always a good breeze for waterfowling, so we erected a temporary blind in some bullrushes at the north end of Baynard's farm pond.
It wasn't long before small vees of geese appeared on the horizon, looking for a protected place to hunker down. Luke and Baynard called to them,soon enough they were circling warily, eyeing the decoys. At one point, a huge flock homed in. 'We'll leave these alone,' said Baynard. 'Just shoo them off. I don't want to shoot into a flock that big, you educate too many birds.'
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