Raptors at the Spit

 “Every bird of prey looks over its shoulder before it goes in for the kill, even a hawk. Even they know to watch their backs – every single one but an eagle. It’s fearless.” 
                                                                                                     ― Michelle Horst, Wake Me Up

 THE EAGLE by Alfred Billings Street (1811-1881) American poet

 We touch the green marge; hark! a shriek shrill and loud,

 A bird with huge wings, like a fragment of cloud,

 Shoots swift from the gorge, sweeps around, then on high
Cleaves his way, till he seems a dim spot in the sky;

 Then stooping in circles, contracting his rings,

 He swoops to a pine-top and settles his wings;

 An eagle! an eagle! how kingly his form!

 He seems fit to revel in sunshine and storm;
What terrible talons, what strength in that beak,

 His red rolling eye-balls the proud monarch speak;

He casts looks, superb and majestical, down;

His pine for a throne, and his crest for a crown;

 He stirs not a feather, though shoutings arise,

 But still flings beneath mute contempt at our cries;

 A branch is hurl'd upward, whirls near him, but vain,

 He looks down his eloquent, glorious disdain,
Till he chooses to spread his broad pinions of gray

 And launch in majestic, slow motion away.

 “To soar with eagles all you need to do is believe that you can fly.” ― Anthony T.Hincks

Photographs 2018 Tyee Spit,Campbell River, B.C.