BEHR655 said:
White head and tail, and dark underwings are gradually acquired in four years[/I]
Results of long-term observation of nest-banded balds show that it takes four to five years to gain full adult plumage.
By the bye - some folks in Homer, AK, consider that little ol' lady who feeds the bald eagles scrap from the fish processing plant on the Homer Spit to be having a less-than-salutary effect on the eagles in that the area. Eagle biologists are concerned that the availability of "free meals" (free of biological cost - energy expenditure ) for low these many years is altering the migratory habits of many of those locally bred birds which would otherwise enter the normal seasonal migration of the species.
Granted, it's a great place to watch eagles close-up, and is a great tourist attraction (if you don't mind them being semi-domesticated - like, for example, Canada geese short-stopped during migration each year until many decide to stay year-round as residents on recently prepared broad swards of easily grazed grass where open grass grazing had been heretofore unavailable).
If you really want to see A LOT of eagles, visit Haines AK in late November and December when a quirk of local geology and hydrology results in 1.) a failure of the Chilkoot River to freeze which 2.) thus welcomes a massive run of dog salmon up the Chilkoot which 3.) attracts several THOUSANDS of bald eagles to the valley of the Chilkoot. They roost in the trees along the river - tens of eagle to upwards of 80 to 100 in the larger trees by the river. Thousands of eagles along the banks and gravel bars have a feast for the duration of the salmon run - as do the occasional grizzly, fox, and wolf. The road from Haines up to Haines junction on the AlCan highway runs right beside the river. Pull over to the side wherever you like and take your pick which of the 500 or so eagles within camera range you'd like to memorialize on film or with a concatenation of pixels. It's a breathtaking sight. When the run's over, the eagles disperse southward. This has apparently been going on since the end of the last Ice Age, so the eagles have accomodated nicely to the seasonally available banquet that's not likely to end until melting glaciers and warming of the Gulf of Alaska change the migratory schedule of the dog salmon. But that's less likely to be as abrupt a change as will be the death or disability of the little lady on the Homer spit. What will her fat-'n'-happy eagles do then, having lost the urge to migrate to seasonally appropriate fishing grounds?
When we "tame nature" it's generally more immediately to nature's peril than to our own.
Dave
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