Blog de Puree

The lower Merrimack River Valley is a unique ecosystem in many aspects. One of the most interesting is that it is identical to Canadian summer habitats of the American Bald Eagle. And that, of course, means that these wonderful raptors visit the area every winter to breed.

If anyone has been following local news reports and local bird bloggers, they’d know that there’s been a steady rise in the number of eagles that are breeding in the area—and consequently, bird enthusiasts are flocking to vantage points all along the river to catch a glimpse of this magnificent bird.

Whenever Randye and I drive to Newburyport, we typically take the Chain Bridge, recently renamed the Lt. Derek S. Hines Bridge after a local U.S. Army Ranger who was killed in the Iraq War. Interestingly, the Chain Bridge is known as the first bridge over the navigable waters of the Merrimack River (Anyone who has gotten my tour of the area would know that cool tidbit.) But I digress.

As we take the Chain Bridge, we now drive slowly because we are almost guaranteed a glimpse of juvenile eagles as they soar on the warm air currents rising off the river, searching for unsuspecting fish that stray too close to the surface of the water. And these birds come in very low at times–literally down to 50 feed above the bridge. With their brown plumage spattered with bits of white throughout, these large birds seem not to be concerned with the crowds of birders that festoon the rails of the bridge with massive telephoto lenses and bedangled with multiple binoculars around their necks, and who dart back and forth across the bridge and road on Deer Island for a better view—which is in the middle of the river—like confused meerkats sprinting across dried Serengeti river beds. Actually, the young eagles seem to enjoy it.

While we can usually get a great view of one or two juveniles near the bridge, we’ve yet to see a mature bald eagle. However, looking downriver from the bridge—approximately a quarter mile—we can always see a convocation of eagles floating above a spit of land covered with pine trees that sticks out into a bend in the river.

Just upriver from the Chain Bridge and the Interstate 95 bridge, which is approximately 200 meters up, Maudslay State Park sits on the Newburyport side of the river. The former Moseley family estate, it “features 19th century gardens and plantings, rolling meadows, towering pines, and one of the largest naturally-occurring stands of mountain laurel in Massachusetts,” according to the Web site. But relating to this blog post, part of the park is blocked off from human visitation for a portion of the year because it is the nesting ground of visiting bald eagles. The park is also a favorite walking and mountain biking destination for Randye and I, but we have yet to see eagles there.

Traveling the area near the river has now become a bit of a sport. Two actually. The first is to spot eagles, often at our own endangerment because neither one of us is watching the road. The second is to avoid frantic birders that scurry about the area.