The
Eagle Feather
Spending most of my days on or along the Upper
Colorado River, I get to see lots of wildlife. Deer and rabbits
are too many to be counted, and in the winter elk are not only near the road,
but sometimes bedded down in the middle of it.
On my river floats, we often see otters, bighorn sheep, ospreys, many
types of waterfowl, bears, moose, beavers, and of course, brown and rainbow
trout. But of all the creatures who live
on the river, none are quite as majestic as the bald eagle. They are more
numerous during the winter, when the dark contrasting colors of their feathers
blend in perfectly with the snow-covered hills above. But there also are several mating pairs that
live year-round on the river as well, and they’ve become a frequent and welcome
sight on my river trips.
One bald eagle in
particular has been around a lot this summer, and I’ve begun calling him Burt,
mostly because “Burt the Bald Eagle” has good alliteration (I used to call the
osprey that hung out here last year Oscar for the same reason). Burt was seen
by us on the river pretty much every day in June and July, and for most of
August. He was usually in the canyon
section that I run, below the Pinball boat ramp but above Jack Flats. Sometimes we’d even see him twice – once in
his favorite tree on the shuttle ride up, and again on the way down from the
boat.
I’d never expected
to have any other contact with Burt other than visual, and that’s always been
enough for me. Even though you can
practically see a bald every day if you are on the river, and several if you
drive the length of the Colorado River Road
in the winter and have sharp eyes, I never get tired of seeing them. Maybe because when I was growing up in
western Massachusetts, they were
still quite rare. DDT use was finally
outlawed in the Sixties in the wake of Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”,
and their comeback was steady but slow.
I can still vividly remember the first bald eagle I saw, it was from a
high viewpoint overlooking the Quabbin Reservoir. My girlfriend at the time and
I had road-tripped there for the weekend, and while looking down at the huge
body of water below we suddenly saw a bald eagle float by, hundreds of feet in
the air but hardly moving a muscle. Years of hearing about bald eagles and
seeing them on TV had not adequately prepared me for the sight of an actual
living one, and I can remember it as if it were yesterday and not almost thirty
years ago.
Early this July, I
took a family of four on a fishing trip, and we saw Burt on his regular perch
on the way up the road to our put in. We
paused for a moment on the road just opposite to look at him, Burt bright and
backlit by the morning sun. Then we moved on, got the boat in the water, and
began our trip.
Later on, we were in
the canyon section, and the dad hooked a nice brown trout. I moved the raft over to the left bank, and
as I did someone noticed a big bald eagle up in a tree watching us intently. As
I netted and released the fish, Burt was looking down at us with an expression
that seemed to say, “You guys going to eat that?”. Then, with a couple of
swipes with his huge wings, he flew out of the tree and headed downstream. We
all looked around at each other with big smiles, both for the close encounter
with the eagle and the even closer one with a wild brown trout.
Soon thereafter we
were out of the canyon, and began floating down the straight section of river
above Jack Flats. As we rounded the
corner, one of my passengers noticed an eagle in a tree that leans out over the
Colorado River. I
suggested that we keep our rods down, and try to stay as quiet as possible, and
see how close we could come to Burt this time.
As it turned out, it was very
close. My big raft hugged the left bank, and due to the high water we were able
to float directly underneath Burt. He
looked down on us unperturbed, slowly rotating his head around as we
passed. Luckily he wasn’t due for a
bowel movement, for if he had he would have pooped on our heads. Once we were below him, I gently rotated the
boat around so that we could look back up at him, with the bright red backdrop
of Derby Mesa behind him.
Then something
unusual happened. The wind, which had
been intermittently gusting all morning, suddenly kicked up a little extra, and
we saw a white tail feather blow off of Burt’s bottom, and begin to swirl
around in the air high above the river. Then, even more oddly, a swallow
swooped in from nowhere, and began chasing the tail feather around as it made
huge loops in mid-air high above the river.
It was quite a sight, bird and feather having what looked liked a
dogfight, but then the wind blew the feather across to the other side of the
river, and we thought the aerial display was over. But then the wind shifted again, and then the
feather was doing big circles over the water again, and when it momentarily
stopped blowing, the feather dropped straight down into the river. \
The first thought
that popped into my head was, “There’s an eagle feather in the river!”, and I
immediately rowed hard for the left bank to see if perhaps we might see the
feather floating downstream. By now we
were two hundred yards downstream from the tree in which Burt still sat, and
the feather was out of sight. I wasn’t
sure whether the feather would float or for how long, but in short order there
it was, coming down the middle of the river like a little white sailboat. We were excited to see it, and when it was
about fifty yards above us I began rowing out to the middle to intercept
it. When we got close, I handed my
landing net to the mother of the group in front, and she deftly used the net to
pluck the errant feather out of the water.
She took it out of the net and held it up for all to see. We had an eagle feather on the boat!
She tried to give it
to me, but I insisted that she keep it.
After all, this was their
trip, not mine, I was just the operator of the boat getting them down the
river. I told her that she should keep
it forever, and that it would bring her good luck. Secretly, I really wanted that eagle for
myself, but it seemed like they were the ones that should keep it. Later, when they were getting ready to go
home she offered it to me again, and again I reluctantly told her to keep
it.
Once they were gone,
I got on my bicycle to begin riding up to the put in to get my truck and
trailer. On the way, I saw a couple of
my neighbors, and stopped to tell them about the eagle feather. “Hey! You’ll never guess what happened
today! We were on the river, and saw
this eagle, and its tail feather blew off, and we were able to pluck it out of
the river!” Before I could get much
further, they said, “That’s really illegal! You better not tell anyone about
that!” That sounded crazy to me, but
they didn’t know too much more about it, other than that Native Americans were
the only people allowed to keep any eagle feathers. I didn’t really believe them, for I didn’t
see how there could be anything wrong with keeping an eagle feather, especially
the way that we came about getting it, but figured I could just look into it
later.
As I made my way up
the road on my bike, I saw another neighbor, and stopped to relate the story of
the feather to him. Once I got to the
park of snagging the feather out of the river, he said, “You better get rid of
it! Its illegal to have that!”. Once more I was dumbfounded. How could have an eagle feather be illegal,
and why did everyone but me seemed to know about it? Later that night, I went on-line and did a
little research, and soon learned about the Bald Eagle Protection Act of
1940. It turns that when eagle numbers
were in serious decline, Congress passed the Act to help protect them. Perhaps
they didn’t know that their dropping numbers were due in large part to DDT use,
but in any case the law was still on the books and in 1962 the Act was expanded
to included golden eagles as well.
I tried to get a
hold of my customers to let them know about this, but was unable to reach
them. I wanted to let them know about it
before they told the wrong person about it and ended up in some kind of
trouble. The next day I finally did, and when I told them it also seemed like a
crazy law to them as well, and that they would have to consider their options.
Of course, the easy thing to do would be to simply go to the nearest trash
receptacle, toss it in, and be done with it.
But somehow, that just didn’t seem right to them or me. They were on their way out of town, and said
that they would have to think about the best thing to do with it.
We kept in periodic
email contact over the next month, and during that time I came up with the best
idea I could about how to deal with our Feather Problem. If she could get the feather to me, I could
simply take it out on the river on my next float, and place it back into the
water in the same spot we plucked it out.
She seemed to like that suggestion, and a few weeks later when they were
back in Vail, I swung by their hotel and picked up a sealed envelope from the
front desk clerk, feeling like I was consummating some kind of illicit drug or
arms deal.
So now Burt’s
discarded tail feather was back in my possession, and I had to get it back into
the river where it belonged. The next day I had float with some folks that I
hadn’t met before, and I wanted to wait to do it with someone I knew could
appreciate the moment. The following
week I was going to take a regular client of mine out on the river with his
brother, and was going to wait until that trip, but when that day came I forgot
the feather in my shop, and so I had to be a felon a little bit longer.
Then coming up soon
on my schedule was a trip taking out some filmmakers from CNN who were filming
a feature about the Colorado River and its water
issues. That seemed like it would be a
perfect moment, to make myself right with the law once more in front of plenty
of witnesses. That way, in case I ever
found myself before the Supreme High Court Of Animal Parts, I could call them
in as witnesses, or at least get their depositions.
They came on a
perfect day, and we had an almost perfect day on the river. About the only thing that didn’t fall into
place was that we didn’t get to see Burt while we were out that day, but the
guys in the other boat did. He was in
one of his usual fishing holes (i.e., in a branch looking down on one) and he
flew off, we were in the Whirlpool Canyon looking upstream at a bubble line
while trying to put the show’s host onto a fish. He did hook a nice trout on a hopper moments
later, but by then Burt had flown away downstream to one of his other
spots.
Later we were a mile
further downstream, and about a half mile from Jack Flats. It was time to put
that eagle feather back into the river.
As we approached the leaning tree, I pointed it out to those on my boat,
and as we passed the tree, leaned over to place it gently back. My boat kept wanting to float right along
with the feather, for since there was no wind we were all floating along at the
same speed. I had to back row my boat to
keep it away from the feather, and finally some distance began to grow. The crew shot some video of this, and
possibly a still image, but there were so many different cameras on both boats
that day that I rarely used my own. But it occurred to me almost too late that
I should get one of my own, and blindly shooting pictures downriver at the
shrinking feather I managed to take one.
We did get to see
Burt that day, but not from the river. Before we began our float, I took the
crew up to the top of Derby Mesa, to see what I consider to be one of the best
views in Colorado (and that’s a
long, lengthy list). It’s only about a mile from the River
Road, but about 900 feet higher after winding past
some tight switchbacks.( I take most of my river clients to this overlook, and
not just the national media). Sometimes I get pretty funny looks from people
who see me taking my big green river raft up there, into country more suited
for 4 X 4s.
The crew was awed
by the view, as am I even after having seen it a few hundred times. While taking in the view, which included
looking down at the first five miles of Colorado River we’d be floating, a big
Golden Eagle drifted past, heading down valley, and we got to see it from just
above, and not from below like you usually see them. Then a couple minutes later, riding along the
same thermal, came Burt. I had been
pretty sure that he lived in the canyon three miles above, in a nest the size
of an upended Volkswagen Beetle. We got
to look down on Burt from above, and I was instantly transported back in time
almost forty years, to being high on a hill in Massachusetts seeing my first
bald.
Over the past month
since then, I’ve continued to see Burt and always wave hello to him. I’ve wondered if he recognizes me or my boat,
and something happened last week that maybe he does. There were two guys on my boat fishing, and
as we approached Jack Flats I told them about the eagle feather. As I finished,
I rotated the boat around and there was Burt, over in a dead tree river
left. He was watching us float by with
his usual nonchalance. We got below him
and temporarily forgot him as we fished the big eddy next to the campsite, but
one of them got a tangle and the current slowly brought us back up to Burt. It was raining a little, and Burt held up his
wings and began preening himself. As he
pecked and poked his chest, a small white breast feather came slowly drifting
down, which we could all clearly see against the deep red backdrop of Derby
Mesa. Its seemed to take forever to
fall, and it landed directly below him in a small willow. I looked at my companions, and said, “Maybe
we’ll just leave that feather alone this time!”
Jack
Bombardier
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