Bald Eagle over Alaska

Bald Eagle flying over Southeast Alaska

(This is the new drawing today.)

This is a drawing of a Bald Eagle over Southeast Alaska.  I lived there in 1986-87.  It is an amazing place.  There are numerous islands and much of the mainland is blocked from access due to a large glacier behind cities like Juneau.  There are conifer trees nearly everywhere and it is very beautiful.  It rains a lot so it is a rain-forest, but not a tropical one.  The islands that are near the mainland are also covered in beautiful trees. 

The bald eagles are very common there.  Bald eagles are fish eagles.  In Southeast Alaska, like near Juneau, the bald eagles eat mostly fish.  They also are scavengers.  Most birds of prey will eat a free meal when they see one already dead.  The bald eagle that live inland are more likely to eat rodents and other small prey. 

Bald eagles are powerful birds and one wildlife officer found a collar of a cat in an eagle nest.  That is not PROOF that the eagle killed and ate the cat.   Maybe the cat was roadkill.  But a cat's weight is not too much for a bald eagle to carry.  A bald eagle can weigh up to 14 lbs or a mass of 6.35 kg.  A bald eagle can have a wingspan of 7.5 feet or 2.29 meters.   That is wider than most people are tall. 

When we went on a cruise excursion near Juneau we saw bald eagles fishing and fighting over the fish.  The cluster of bald eagles in the middle are showing how some eagles will try to steal a fish from an eagle that caught a fish. 

I got the idea for the drawing from a bedspread that belongs to my brother in law.  The tree on the left side is actually the side of his bed and the floor.  But it looked so much like a tree that maybe had been struck by lightning or died years before...that I decided to draw in in my picture. 

Bald Eagle from blanket

Final note:  As birders ourselves, it is amazing to see any bird of prey.  They have a look totally different from other birds.  There is something regal about birds of prey or raptors.  Remember, the word raptor referred to birds first.  It was only later that it began to be used to describe smaller killer Theropod dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Utahraptor.  But it is very easy to see why these smaller dinos got to share the name of raptor.  Both avian raptors...or hawks, eagles, falcons etc...and small Theropod dinosaurs had killer claws and feathers.  If you look at some of them like Microraptor and you see that some dino raptors also could fly!

Velociraptor in Gobi Desert

Utahraptor Family

Microraptor flying through the Forest