Forest Lawn Cemetery is a popular place. People are just dying to spend time there. For a variety of raptors, including several different hawks, kestrals, osprey, screech owls and the magnificent albeit familiar-to-most-folks bald eagle, it is a great place to call home.
The scientific name gives you clues about the structure of the bald eagle – haliaeetus leucocephalus is Latin for “sea eagle with a white head.” With a large dark body and a large white head and neck, this raptor is primarily a fish eater, but will take birds and mammals, and is a master at stealing food from other birds of prey, especially the “sea hawk” or osprey. There are several osprey that nest in the neighborhood of the cemetery and they commonly challenge the eagles in the eagles’ own back yard. In turn, the eagles are often seen stealing fish from the osprey.
The sexes look very much alike, the female being larger than the male and having a larger beak.Her greater size is needed during copulation and later empowers the female to protect eggs and chicks on the nest; the smaller size makes the male a little better fighter, hunter, and aerial food stealer. During courtship and early development, differences in behavior and voice pitch become a bit more obvious. In the photo on the right, the larger female is in the foreground. This year’s couple is comprised of an older female and her new-this-year mate. She showed up by herself in the middle of August and he came around about 3 weeks later. The first couple months together was very interesting to watch, as this was his first relationship. Eagles mate for life, unless one or the other of a pair gets seriously injured or killed. They are also very loyal to a nest site. We could tell very soon that this was a new male, based on his behavior and markings on his white feathers. Watching the two of them was like looking in on a boss interviewing, training, and accepting an apprentice.
Soon after returning from a few months hiatus away from the cemetery, the couple undertakes the arduous task of rebuilding a nest that will eventually grow in size to that of a queen sized bed! The male and the female both gather nesting material, beginning with larger branches and eventually finishing with leafy twigs and spanish moss. A nest was found in Ohio back in the 20′s that measured 9 feet wide, 20 feet deep, and weighed more than 2 tons! On several occasions this male was seen bringing a branch to the nest and spending considerable time and effort nervously trying to position the material correctly in the nest, with the female watching from a perch above. Eventually she would drop down onto the nest and within seconds install the branch. She is, after all, the veteran in this relationship, and he is the apprentice…
(Submitted by Jim Gray)
