Eagle Nest
I was driving to work the other day when I spied these two bald eagles sitting by their nest in a tree about fifty yards from the road. Years ago, this would have been a rare sight but the population of bald eagles is rising here on the Eastern Shore and now, while not common, they can be seen every now and then.
The bald eagle is a magnificent creature. A full grown adult’s wing span is almost eight feet across and the contrast between it’s deep dark body and it’s brilliant white head and tail is strikingly beautiful when seen in the wild against muted landscape.
Normally, they roost alongside the rivers and bay to have easy access for fishing. The nest in this picture is about three foot across, typical for the big bird.
I can always spot one flying in the distance, it’s wings seem to flap more heavily than the other large birds. It gives me the sense that it’s body is so large, that even with those great powerful wings, it has to work harder to keep aloft. Then in a magnificent instant, it glides to water’s surface from above, extends it’s talons and effortlessly and magically ascends with big fish in hand.
I’ve seen them routinely pick up rockfish (sea bass as we call them here) two feet long, then sluggishly lumber away to the nearest limb to tear at their prey with knife like beak and claws.
Also- In reading a book recently about the Enneagram, a vey ancient geometric diagram that symbolizes and maps the structure of certain types of events, the author uses Sir Isaac Newton’s well know experiment in which he uses a prism to refract sunlight coming through a small opening in his shuttered window to illustrate how the event of setting up and performing the experiment conforms with this structure.
I don’t remember much about Newton from my high school physics classes, but the author mentions that Newton, shortly before he died said: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
This unflinchingly honest self-evaluation stuck me, especially coming from such a man. Who amongst us realizes that the sum of everything that we know is a mere microscopic speck compared to everything there is. How quick we are to think we know so much and have achieved so much!
Alan