When Catfish Fly
Irreversible Upside Downs — Predators and those who have come to love them.
by SGHolland©2017
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor
One’s man’s pleasure is another’s pain
A thing which is a sin to one is a blessing to another
One man’s loss is another man’s profit
One man’s fault is another man’s lesson
Dana Nesiti spends a lot of time hanging around a Bald Eagle’s nest in Pittsburgh PA on the banks of The Mon. The Monongahela River, that is.
There is a nest of a pair of beautiful Bald Eagles named the Hays Eagles, since they are in a section of Pittsburgh called Hays. They are ending their fifth summer there. The first summer a storm brought their nest down and they fed their eaglet on the ground! They re-built grandly! This year it is in a third nest, built in three days after the tree with the wonderful, huge, comfortable nest they built four years ago plunged to the ground early this spring, taking the nest with it as well as one unhatched egg.
The Hayses, Mom and Dad, sat in a nearby tree getting used to this idea and after three days began building a new nest in a nearby double tree — very sturdy. They worked feverishly for a very short time bringing in branches of all sizes and shapes and expertly jamming them together to make a nest that was a fraction of the size of the old one, and lo and behold, they laid an egg in it!
They are the epitome of the word Survivor.
Each year I have watched, thanks to an outfit called PixController.com who, with sponsors, set up a day and night cam in a tree up the hill from there. The footage streams day and night through laying and nesting and fledging season. It is a lesson in life, let me tell you, to watch the daily adventure that a wild eagle family have. Surprises, and dangers. Lessons learned. Disasters. Miracles! And the exhibit of the magnificent design of a Power Greater Than eagles or humans working out survival and reproduction through the creatures billed and taloned. We managed this season by peeking through the branches to the new tree and the new nest thanks to Pix. Next year: new cam into the nest, we are given to believe.
What is up is down.
Don’t feed the little one first! He’s less likely to survive.
The littlest one gets bonked back in the peck order. That’s life.
Parents bonk the sassy upstart!
Let it snow let it snow! Life goes on!
Mom’s ruler of the roost! Dad’s the builder!
The Hayses LOVE each other. They communicate. The parents passionately protect each egg. They work out the sibling rivalry. They clean up after the kids with new grass. They “starve” the babies when it’s time for them to learn to fly; it motivates them out of the comfortable nest and into the real world. They teach them how to live and how to be eagles.
There were literally millions of followers all around the world the second year they were there. That is when I joined. People still gather at the Pixcontroller site to see what’s happening in the off-months. We know each other by now.
AND we know Dana Nesiti. We know the guys at the nearby scrap yard. We know Photogs Annette, and Dan, and we know “Woody”, and “Ivabouthadit” and “Fish”. We know hundreds of people by name and we share a lore that never stops stupefying us and delighting us and making us laugh.
It sometimes makes us sad. And it makes us say “eww.” We don’t like to see the food the eagles rely on, especially if it’s cute and furry. We hope those talons quickly squeeze the senses out of the fish and other prey before they rip it apart around the Hays dining table. We have done some growing up watching the little fuzzy featherballs with huge eyes and funny large yellow feet grow into black and gray facsimiles of their parents.
Wingercizing is what we call the flapping going on in the nest at this time of year. Branching and hopping from branch to branch H7 is finding that the enormous (6' wingspan) flappers on either side do not fit through some spaces in the branches. This big baby will fly away once he or she learns to fish. In four years he or she will begin to have a white head and white tail. He or she will not nest here. Mom and Dad Hays will be busy making more eagles.
“The Hayses,” five years ago, were the first eagles to turn up on The Mon after 200 years of river pollution made such wildlife impossible! Pittsburgh has actually cleaned up all that smoke and industrial fall-out and have a sanctuary now.
Miracles!
Here’s a great interview with Dana Nesiti and some live shots of the eagles.
