The Steller’s sea-eagle in flight. (Photo courtesy Mark Allen)
To most people outside of northeastern Asia, the Steller’s Sea-Eagle was just a massive bird who lived faraway. Birders and ornithologists outside of the region were perhaps enamored by the creature’s history and habits, but its relative remoteness kept it out of reach. A wing span of approximately 10 feet. A broad yellow beak, pale determined eyes. White tail feathers that fan out like snow-covered pine boughs. A bird to dream about.
All that changed in August.
The bird journeyed east, as far as researchers can tell, alone. From Alaska to Texas to the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec and New Brunswick. From there to Nova Scotia to Massachusetts… to the mouth of the Sheepscot River, Lincoln County, Maine.
The Steller’s Sea-Eagle – or Haliaeetus pelagicus – appeared off the coast of Georgetown, near Five Islands Wharf.
Hundreds of birders flocked there, too. Expensive cameras and outstretched hands punctuate the videos taken that day and posted later on social media. Linda Tharp first reached out to Maine Audubon, when she suspected she’d caught sight of the bird. Lobstermen working on the wharf that day are seen laughing in the footage, amused by all the excitement. A few even took some visiting birders out on their boats to try to catch a better glimpse at the creature, who prefers high-up perches in coastal trees.
For the next few days, Maine Rare Bird Alert, a website where rare birds sightings can be posted then confirmed or rejected by experts, looked like a fan blog devoted to the bird. Groupme messages grew for birders trying to keep on top of the eagle’s whereabouts. It was sensational. A joy-tonic at the start of a bitter Maine winter.
By the first week in February at Osier’s Wharf before the drawbridge in South Bristol, out-of-town birders had already come and gone.
Inside, the Osier’s Wharf Store was tropical compared to the bitter wind pressing into the windows. When Jeanne Marshall, who works at the store, heard “Steller’s Sea-Eagle,” her eyes sparked.
Marshall stood behind the low counter, the grills behind her hot but still clean. The morning was slow. There were no other customers. A few gulls talked above the wharf.
“There were people here from Cincinnati,” she said, pausing before adding: “In winter.” She raised her brows. She described their cameras with long zoom lenses, their interest in the rare bird. They had seen it by Fort William Henry, they told her. A neighbor said the same, Marshall recalled.
She pulled out a calendar to check the date she met them, though it didn’t really matter. It could have been yesterday, from the way she described the interaction.
“They were just so excited,” said Marshall.
It was an excitement that was widely shared.
“This is the largest eagle in the … world. And it’s here!” said Nick Lund, outreach and network manager for Maine Audubon and contributing writer to Audubon Magazine. The awe in his voice was palpable.
“It’s a very unique situation having the bird here – and having it stay,” said Mike Witte, a state-licensed animal damage control agent with Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife who lives in Damariscotta. He called the bird “majestic,” and noted that it can pretty much co-exist with “our eagles,” meaning bald eagles.
So the story is simple: An unusual bird found its way to the coast of Maine. More specifically to Lincoln County, whose tidal rivers, jutting peninsulas, and small islands are attractively hospitable to the eagle. And people are excited over the elusive creature that may be the County’s rarest visitor yet.
But the questions that followed – in the media, online, in conversations around the county – are not as simple. Why did the bird come here? How long will it stay? If it leaves, where will it go next? Could more Steller’s Sea-eagles voyage this direction? Should we be concerned about it, as spring then summer approach?
While the eagle’s arrival was certainly unexpected, it’s not necessarily that strange.
Behavior like this – a bird venturing “out of place”- is called “vagrancy.” And according to ornithologists, vagrancy is common. Unlikely avian visitors have been traveling to Maine forever, probably, or at least as long as records show. Just as they do elsewhere.
One tropical bird known as a Red-Billed Tropicbird has been summering in Maine for 15 years, according to a 2019 Audubon Magazine article, drawing researchers and birders to puzzle over its metropolitan movement. There’s currently a warbler in Cape Elizabeth fascinating southern Maine birders.
A photo of a frigatebird spotted off the coast of Matinicus Island on Jan. 17 was published in the Boothbay Register, as was Jeff Wells’ photo of a first-year golden eagle in Pemaquid Harbor, spotted while looking for the Steller’s sea-eagle.
“It’s weirder that it doesn’t happen more often,” said Lund. “It’s big and strong enough to fly wherever it wants to.”
Lund reflected on how the eagle’s trajectory – and vagrancy in birds in general – should complicate our understanding of the boundaries and order we have imposed on ecologies.
“It’s such a different way to conceptualize the natural world where you know, you’re not sitting in a car and going on a safari and looking at the things that are there. We are part of the natural world,” said Lund. “And this bird just took up and flew from Russia to Lincoln County. That excitement never goes away.”
Witte, after sharing his perspective on the eagle, turned towards another local ecological scene: The day before, he saw 10 bald eagles encircling a deer carcass on the ice of Damariscotta’s Days Cove. Coyotes joined over the course of the day until, eventually, the carcass was stripped to the bones. This happens every once in a while, he said, but seeing this many eagles in one place is always kind of a thrill.
In other words, amidst all this talk of the sea-eagle, Witte seemed almost urgently tuned into the rest of the environment. As if speaking out of loyalty to the other species, a warning and a question. What else went on while our gaze was fixed on the rare Russian eagle?
Ornithologists and local birders have been fielding questions about the bird’s future for weeks now. But from here, it’s all speculation.
If predicting the future of this eagle is impossible, then what about trying to understand its past? Or at least, its recent past, in Lincoln County. What’s going on in the tailwinds of this bird, who has made a home – at least a temporary one – on this small stretch of Atlantic coast?
No sightings of the sea-faring eagle have been reported over the past week. The tidal surge of birders seems to have ebbed. But the bird’s name – a kind of impression or ghost -still electrifies.
We’ve been largely caught within the orbit of these few unanswerable questions. Repeated online, in shops, in living rooms. We cannot ask the bird. We don’t speak the same language. We can only ask each other, huddled around photographs or in webinars, like one hosted by Lund and Maine Audubon Staff Naturalist and Outreach Coordinator for Maine Fish and Wildlife’s Maine Bird Atlas Doug Hitchcox.
As more and more days go by since the bird was last seen, what other questions start to emerge?
What comes next, when it’s less of an oddity?
A whole temporary economy of images, sounds, and news has grown to track and reflect on the eagle’s whereabouts. And the bird has no need for – or material benefit from – this popularity.
What does the attention feel like? Will it raise more critical questions about habitat loss and lead contamination in the sea-eagles native habitat? Or will it draw more humans into close proximity with the bird, perhaps too close?
How long will the fascination last? How will the eagle be remembered, documented, portrayed?
Will it be given a human name?
Other animals – stranded, lost, or otherwise adventuring – mark the memory of longtime Midcoast residents. Like André the Seal, a male harbor seal who was found in 1961 as a pup in Penobscot Bay and raised by then Harbormaster of Rockport Harry Goodridge.
A sculpture of André by artist Jane Wasey stands in Rockport, immortalizing the seal’s time – 25 years – among land-dwelling humans.
Will the sea-eagle be memorialized in public artwork? In private journals?
Hotels and restaurants – in South Bristol and beyond – have the bird to thank for an otherwise random surge of winter business.
Who will profit from this bird’s whereabouts?
The eagle is feeding, eating fish and ducks now. It appears healthy. But what if any of this changed? Will anyone intervene? What are the stakes of a hypothetical intervention, if it becomes necessary?
Are there other risks or benefits to its presence in Lincoln County that are yet to be discovered?
What traces will the bird leave, if any?
What can we learn about welcoming strangers, birds or their watchers, or otherwise?
What do we call this rare visitor anyway? A vagrant? Lost? A tourist? A traveler? A renegade? A friend? A Lincoln County resident?
