BALD EAGLES MADE FOR AN EXCITING SPRING

          Springtime.  One of my most anticipated days of the year was in the spring…the last weekend of April, to be exact.  That was the weekend our little seven member association opened our cabins on Norway Lake. Most of the cabins were quite small.  Mine was just 400 square feet with a deck half that size.  All the cabins had originally been owned by the railroad and were built in 1928 to house railroad workers.  Later the cabins became a resort and eventually each was sold individually. 

 Everyone showed up for the occasion.  They came from California, Florida, Arizona, Edina, Shakopee, Buffalo and Brainerd.

         A couple of the men began working to start the well pump.  The water was turned on one cabin at a time and that cabin was inspected for leaks—there always seemed to be leaks.  Sometimes the job was big enough to require a plumber.  The paddle boats, yard swings and lawn furniture were taken out of our communal building and placed near the beach and dock areas.  During the summer this building served as a workshop, storage area and laundry room.  The washer and dryer were hooked up.  On Monday Culligan would deliver the water softener.

         We walked the lakeshore picking up trash while chatting about what we had done over the winter.  We looked at the buds on the trees and wished they were leaves.  We checked to see which plants were peeking through and someone always called attention to the trillium among the weeds. 

         One spring was especially exciting.  A pair of bald eagles had built an aerie in the great white pine located just across the road from our mail boxes.  The nest was huge—at lease six feet in diameter.  Long, dry gnarly branches were stacked on and over each other in a seemingly random fashion.  Other branches were shoved in here and there giving the appearance of a nest ready to fall.  As the summer progressed we continued to observe the nest several times a day and were often rewarded by seeing an eagle sitting on the nest and another perched on a branch close by.  After the eggs hatched we could hear the two young ones begging for food and watched as they stuck their scrawny little necks out while they were being fed.  We would stop whatever we were doing to admire the eagles as they soared over the lake.

A friend and I were lucky enough to observe the eagles up close.  One day as we sat in my cabin looking out over the water, an eagle (I think it was the mother) swooped down to the lake and came up with a fairly large fish…about eighteen inches long.  She glided through the air toward us and then, with wings flapping for balance, she landed just a few feet away.  We dared not move but quietly watched as she systematically pecked around the neck, of the fish, until its head fell off.  Then, beginning near a fin, she had just started to eat in earnest when daddy suddenly joined her.  He swooped down, pushed her aside and for several minutes pecked away.  Suddenly a door slammed in the distance.  Fearful, gripping the fish with his talons, daddy led as they both flew away leaving the fish head and several eagle feathers behind. 

Rachel Nemitz, March  2010