If you really want to raise the ire of a competent birder, co-watch a movie with them in which, once again, the normally thin chattering call of a bald eagle is dubbed over by the high-pitched peal of a red-tailed hawk. You couldn鈥檛 upset them more if you went into their backpack and swapped out their binoculars for some cheap 3D movie glasses.
I was thinking of this as I sat on the dock at Hidden Cove on Maligne Lake a couple of days ago. Just above the emerald waters of the protected bay by our camp, two eagle chicks called incessantly for food. They kept calling after their parents came and fed them. It went on for hours, their hunger grating on my mom-nerves. If my Ukrainian Grandmother was alive and present, she would have scaled the tree and fed them perogies until they passed out.
Having already provided a fish meal, one of the parents (let鈥檚 say the mother) stood on the lip of the nest looking back and forth, wondering how she found herself in this gig when only months ago she was child-free, soaring around and having time for things like hobbies. Why won鈥檛 they stop crying, she may have wondered. Please God make them stop.
The sound she was making was absolutely NOT a haunting peal from above, but more like a nervous chatter. If I had to interpret, I think she was wondering where the hell her mate went. He said he would be back half an hour ago.
Curious about what she was really trying to communicate, I searched it up on one of my go-to bird sites, All About Birds by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. According to them, the technical term for the call she was making is the 鈥渓ow kuk-kuk-kuk call.鈥�
This is pretty straight forward as descriptions of birdcalls go, but as usual, these mnemonics sound nothing like the bird to me. I鈥檓 pretty sure all the cheeps, chirrups, peet-seets, and keeeeeeeeek sounds designed to help people learn bird calls are written by members of a secret society鈥攐ne that drinks a lot, as evidenced by the olive-sided flycatcher call mnemonic quick-THREE-BEERS!
Thankfully, on the Cornell website I can just click on the 鈥減lay鈥� sign next to the title to actually hear the eagle call. And yes, the low kuk-kuk-kuk was the vocalization she was making. The meaning has yet to be pinned down scientifically, but it鈥檚 a common thing eagles do鈥攐ne of a handful of sounds they actually make.
Why aren鈥檛 real eagle calls good enough for Hollywood? Is it that the call doesn鈥檛 match the ferocity associated with the animal? I have news fellow artists of the film industry鈥攖his disparity happens everywhere around here. Have you heard a bull elk bugling? It sounds like a pubescent boy butchering a trumpet. But during rutting season that bull could put its tines through the side of your white media van.
At an animal rehabilitation centre, an eagle once grabbed my veterinarian husband by the collar, pulled it tight, and just stared into his eyes for a few moments before letting him go. It was a silent shakedown. Sound was not required for him to understand the eagle would be busting out of this joint sooner-than-later. Capiche?
There isn鈥檛 always a good correlation between sound and our perception of an animal. If there was, cougars would roar before they ambushed their prey (they don鈥檛, so heads up).
Filmmakers, it would be great if eagles could just be eagles making eagle sounds. Then my birding friends could watch a movie in peace.
Niki Wilson
Special to the 51暗网
