PORTLAND, Maine - Bald eagles, bouncing back after years of decline, are swaggering forth with an appetite for great cormorant chicks that threatens to wipe out that bird population in the United States.
"They're like thugs. They're like gang members. They go to these offshore islands where all these seabirds are and the birds are easy picking... These young eagles are harassing the bejesus out of all the birds, and the great cormorants have been taking it on the chin."
...In Alaska, many eagles have shifted their diet from fish to seabirds. In the Midwest, they've been known to eat baby blue herons. And besides Maine's great cormorants, eagles are also feasting on baby double-breasted cormorants, gulls, eider ducks and even loons...
Nobody's raising a stink about the eagles' taste for double-breasted cormorants and gulls because those birds are so numerous and considered nuisances by many.
By 1963, there were only 417 pairs of eagles left in the lower 48 states. There are now more than 10,000 pairs... Minnesota, Wisconsin and Florida each have more than 1,000 pairs of bald eagles...
We see them every time we go up to Leech Lake. Wish they would take out some of the double-breasted cormorants that are eating the walleye up there.
I have been up on the lakes in (very) southern Ontario since I was a young'n and I would be ecstatic if some of those bald eagles took out the cormorants.
ReplyDeleteHaving been a rower in college in Maine on the ocean... I am surprised that bald eagles are killing these birds. I rarely saw them and when I did they were usually scavanging.
You would be surprisd to know how many birds kill other birds chicks, in order to feed themselves. It's a very common practice. For instance, the Southern Giant-petrel does not hesitate to prey on other species chicks, and even adults sometimes. It's a natural behaviour, I don't understand why one would qualify this as being thugs, since they are not humans. It's anthropomorphism.
ReplyDeleteNow what, are they going to introduce a new predator for the eagles?
I find it interesting that the article mentions that nobody's raising a stink about the eagles' taste for double-breasted cormorants and gulls because those birds are so numerous and considered nuisances by many. Indeed, if this wasn't their primary food source (yet, do we know what they were feeding on prior to getting nearly extinct?), why did they turn to cormorants' chicks? Why can't they feed on what they used to feed on? Or maybe this is normal after all...
In Minnesota, people are glad to see the cormorants being eaten, because they have been a federally-protected bird and have multiplied so much that in recent years they have been devastating the walleye (fish) population that the local people like to catch for dinner.
ReplyDeleteDOWN WITH THE CORMORANTS - it's about time someone took care of the pesky flying trash
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