The Bald Truth

The bald eagle, noble and proud, has long been an icon of this country’s fierce power, an image that demands pause and respect.
Bald eagles are America’s national bird and national animal, and they rightfully adorn this nation’s money, seals, and military. Top scouts are named for the eagle.
Of the bald eagle, John Denver wrote in his song “The Eagle and The Hawk:”
“I am the eagle I live in high country/In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky … And all of those who see me, all who believe in me/Share the freedom I feel when I fly…”
Even Sid Vicious, the bassist and vocalist for the English punk band the Sex Pistols, had special praise for the raptor: “We are better than anyone, ain’t we? Except for the Eagles, the Eagles are better than us.”
And the best place in Charleston County to see a bald eagle is at the county’s Bees Ferry Landfill in West Ashley, according to local bird-spotters.
Last Tuesday, there were a solid dozen bald eagles at the landfill. They were intermingled with another dozen juvenile eagles, nighthawks, and gulls.
Lots and lots of gulls.
The eastern face of the main landfill that day was littered with a white-ish blanket of gulls sunning themselves.
Above the open trash pit, umpteen turkey vultures rode fresh thermals and circled upward in a pattern so dense it looked like a light trail of smoke from a distance.
A kestrel clung to the top of a methane vent pipe.
Some of the mature eagles positioned themselves along the fields of weeds the landfill’s management allows to grow as high as four feet. Mice love it in there. And eagles, who prefer fish, love to eat mice, so it’s a win-win.
Bald eagles also perched in trees across the road from the containment pond, flying off at the sound of an electric window winding down in a passing county truck before a photographer could snap a shot.
The rest of the eagles positioned themselves regally on mounds of dirt-covered refuse. Their piercing eyes trained on gulls swooping in on the dump-trucks disgorging waste.
A shower of green water cascades down from the back of the truck, through the crack between the door and the truck bed, like a soup appetizer. Then the flood of trash flows out.
Apparently, spoiled food and discarded household items aren’t the only things that come to the landfill to be put to rest. Eagles are scavenging, lazy, snooty jerks, as it turns out.
“Now what the eagles do, is they wait for the gulls to find something good and fly off with it,” says Harvey Gibson, the facilities manager at the Bees Ferry landfill. “Then, they land next to the gull, and the gull has the sense to move on, and the eagle scavenges what the gull left behind.”
Nate Diaz, executive director of the local and “mostly volunteer” Cape Romain Bird Observatory, said eagles around here have earned their nickname from the Old World: “fish buzzards.”
Diaz has seen bald eagles eating garbage, rotten fish on the beach, and even possum on the side of the road. In defense of the eagle, Diaz said gulls are “smarter and better at opening things.” Some defense.
Founding Father Ben Franklin was no fan. In a letter to his daughter, Franklin wrote:
“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been the chosen Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.”
While touring the landfill a while ago, Gibson came across a bald eagle that was hopping instead of flying. Checking back later, he saw that the bird’s eyes were closed.
Stranger still, the still-breathing bird was not flying off when he approached it. So, Gibson donned a large pair of thick leather work gloves and grabbed the stricken raptor behind its head.
“It was pretty clear pretty quick who had whom,” said Gibson, whose wrist and forearm were snared in the tight grip of the eagle. “It was amazing how strong the bird, as sick as it was, was still so strong.”
Gibson transported the animal to trained professionals at the avian medical center at The Center for Birds of Prey in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in the Francis Marion Forest.
The bird was brought back to health and set free. And maybe just maybe, that same bald eagle, soaring south for breeding in winter, may stop off once again in West Ashley to feed on some stolen garbage.