One of the
best ways to find Golden Eagles in New England is to spend time at fall hawk
watches and get lucky to see one of the small number of birds that pass by each
year. But I’ve never done much in the
way of birding at fall hawk migration spots so my chances to find Golden Eagles
as fall migrants have been limited. The
other option is to be able to find a wintering bird. Often a wintering Golden will stick around in
a general area for a few days, though these birds will frequently cover large
areas and may not be very reliable. However
needless to say, even an unreliable wintering bird will be more chaseable than
a fall migrant that’s just passing through.
As a result
of these challenges, I have a rather checkered history with Golden Eagle in New
England. On the positive side, I have
seen this species in NH and VT based on the sighting of a single bird on
3/25/14. The bird had been reported in
VT the previous couple days, and I was lucky enough to not only find the bird,
but also to watch it fly back and forth over the stateline to add it to both
statelists (I happened to be standing in Vernon, VT at the time). Can’t get much better than that! At the other end of the spectrum was a frustrating
fall sighting I had years earlier as I was birding on Mount Agamenticus in
Maine. The bird was very far to the west
and little more than a speck, though it seemed like it could have been an
immature Golden. Then there was the 7-hour
roundtrip I made up the Maine coast in January 2013 to Flood Brothers Dairy in
Clinton for what was generally described as a reliable wintering bird. Alas the bird was totally unreliable the day
I was there. Ugh.
Then on
February 15, 2019 came reports of a Golden Eagle in central MA in the town of
Montague, feeding on a cow carcass with numerous Bald Eagles. Two consecutive days of sightings and
photographs meant that the Golden was quite reliable. But I couldn’t get out until after church on the
17th, so I crossed my fingers that it would stick around till that afternoon.
The actual
location where the birds were feeding wasn’t very clear from the posts, but
many sightings were from Will’s Ferry Rd.
So when I finally arrived in the area a bit before 2 PM, I drove right to
Will’s Ferry Rd to begin my search. And
within a few seconds I saw a large mixed flock of Ravens and Crows milling
about. After just a few seconds I
realized most of the activity was focused around a distant field which was the
likely location of the carcass (maybe it was a good thing that a slight rise in
the field obscured the actual site of the cow’s remains). Then I started noticing a few Bald Eagles in
the area – first one, then two more, then a group of at least six. And just then I spotted a pair of Eagles
flying low over the field – one seemed a bit smaller than the other. Both then rose up to head to the distant tree
line along the Connecticut River and the slightly smaller bird had a white tail
with a dark terminal band, and white patches at the base of the primaries on
the otherwise dark wings. I had the
Golden Eagle! I watched it for just a
few seconds before it went behind the trees, and then followed it along the
river for a few more seconds, mostly obscured by the branches, until it
disappeared in the distance to the southwest.
Now I just
waited for it to return to give me better looks. But over the next 2 hours I never did see the
Golden again. Though I had great views
of Bald Eagles, with 10 in view at one time.
Plus I had a calling Fish Crow to give me a sweep of the Corvids. And a small flock of Redpolls feeding nearby
was a nice addition.
I have to
admit that as I continued to wait in vain for the Golden Eagle I began to doubt
my sighting. On the negative side, no
one else spotted the Golden that day, and my sighting was brief. But I was able to see every key field mark
except for the golden hind-neck. And the
bird seemed to be passing through the area and then flying off to the south
down the Connecticut River, instead of feeding at the carcass. In other words, perhaps it wasn’t in the area
for long that day, giving other birders next to no time to spot it. So rather than doubting my brief but good
sighting, I decided to stick with my initial ID and added it to my MA
statelist.
Golden Eagle
was number 415 for MA. And although MA
was my 20th state for this species (the dark shaded states in my statebird map
below), I still need it in quite a number of other states especially in the
eastern and central portions of its regular range (the cross-hatched
states).
Statebird
map
