A Crane's Last Song, By Mossy Kilcher

Today the fields are strangely silent. Two days ago huge flocks of sandhill cranes were resting on the hay meadows, as they have done for over 30 years, stopping to regain their strength in the relative safety of our farm, poking in the earth for worms and slugs, and dancing to their mates. But now one of their kind is dead, killed by a Bald Eagle, and the only crane with the courage to fly over is its bereaved mate, calling and searching all day long for its lifetime partner.

It happened on Thursday at 7 a.m. A pair of cranes were walking carefully about in the tall grass, perhaps looking for a nesting site, when the eagle swooped down on one of them. Before I could get to it and chase the eagle off, the crane was dead, its back ripped open, its blood stained feathers scattered over the field. The rest of the flock called out in panic and rose into the sky, and have not returned since.

For those who think eagles are only scavengers, wrong! For those who think our local eagle population is not harmful to our other wildlife, or don’t kill adult cranes, wrong! All winter (even while being fed on the Spit, and probably because of being so habituated to humans and therefore totally fearless and obnoxious) this particular pair of eagles has been terrorizing the neighborhood, first killing off my chickens, and then most of the pheasants (I never lost poultry to eagles before this year!) At this moment--shorebird festival time--least a dozen eagles are patrolling the Homer bench over my house all day long, looking for migrating geese, ducks, and mostly cranes. I cant even count the number times the cranes have been chased off by eagles, their natural enemy. Every time I hear a flock of cranes crying out and rising skyward in the distance I look up and soon I see an eagle circling high above. The crane knows it is most vulnerable on the ground.

As an ardent birder, I have nothing against the beautiful eagles when in their proper place, in proper balance with other creatures and not fed by humans! Since they are no longer allowed to be fed on the Spit--thank goodness!--it may admittedly be harder on our local wildlife for awhile, and there may be those who will use that as an argument for feeding them. I hear there are still some folks feeding eagles around the area. Do you know what you people are doing to the environment? To the other bird populations? To the small animals? To our own backyards?

The eagle is a predator, neither endangered nor helpless, and able to survive naturally in Alaska year round in its natural habitat. The majestic, spectacular, long traveling cranes, on the other hand, harm absolutely no one. They dance and make beautiful music that gladdens our hearts. The eagle is protected from hunting, the crane is not. Go figure!

My hope is that the folks who champion the shorebirds and bird rookeries around here from an economic if not environmental standpoint, will band together to finally get laws passed on the state level, to prohibit the feeding of predator birds, just as feeding wolves and bears is prohibited. It is high time. As long as the eagles think they can hang around and get handouts in someone’s backyard, and until they are forced to move on and disperse to wilder places where they have to compete with each other for space and food as nature intended, all our chickens, cranes, pets, tern colonies, bird rookeries, and sea birds are going to continue to be in danger.