I’ve been trying to figure it out. Yesterday afternoon, we were treated to a serenade by an eagle. It’s not something eagles usually do, just scream for a couple hours for no apparent reason. But this eagle, or one in a similar area, has done it before.
I spent some time trying to figure out what might make an eagle screech. And I still have no idea.
One reason might be that a young eagle might be yelling for food. It’s a bit late in the year to still have a demanding youngster around, and the one doing all the screeching was not a young eagle. It had adult colours, so that would put it at least four years old. They usually take that long before they get the full white head and tail, and this one had a white head and tail.
They have softer calls for mating, but this was not s soft call. And again, a bit late in the year for that.
There were no other birds around giving it a hard time. Many other birds are not eagle fans and will bug them to no end to try to get them to leave and area. But that didn’t seem to be happening.
Eagles can be pretty territorial so they can be yelling at other eagles or humans in the area. There was another eagle around, but that one left. Probably to get away from all the racket. There were people in the general area, but not close enough that it should upset the eagle.
My wife suggested maybe something was wrong with it and maybe we should go check. It was perched at the top of a rather tall pine tree, so I was not prepared to show off my lack of climbing skills to check out a noisy eagle.
So for two hours or more, this eagle would just screech every so often. It might be quiet for a few minutes, but then it would get right back to telling the world it’s problems. Only, I don’t speak eagle.
In the end, I still have no idea what it was so upset about. But it seemed rather taken with it’s own voice. I would have been much happier with an upset chickadee.