Eagle eyed

I could be blogging about leafleting for the Labour Party; down streets and up tenement stairs to post bold red statements through unresponsive doors. Or I could just rant about the curse of badly placed letter boxes (pity the postman who has to do this every day). Or fret about signs of a community so ill at ease with itself that some residential blocks are virtually impossible to get into – don’t they want any mail or newspapers? It’s all too depressing. So instead I am going to rise above it and post another picture from my cousin Beryl.

The first photos she sent me – those elks on the Trans Canada Highway – prompted my most international correspondence so far (yeah, well ok, my only international correspondence from people I don’t know) with a debate about whether the image was real or not: one said it was a Photo Shop fake; three said it was real.

So how about these amazing shots of eagles? Beryl says she can vouch for the authenticity of these pictures, taken last year by a friend of a friend who would rather not be identified because he was criticised for perhaps endangering the brood.

But Beryl says: “The photographer was a friend of a friend – he set up a hide with a remote camera and could zoom in – I can guarantee they are authentic though there have been some copy cats. The photographer is refusing to give his name as there are some wild life enthusiasts who say he was risking the rearing of the baby eagles. They grew up and flew away with their parents.”

I don’t think the criticism is likely to be valid. I have watched ospreys feed their young from a distant hide at Loch of the Lowes near Dunkeld and good binoculars bring them wonderfully close without doing the birds any harm at all. Such views are a glimpse of a fragile wild world we seem hell bent on destroying. (For a treat take a look at this Scottish Wildlife Trust ‘nestcam’).

I just wish the Labour Party would make the connection between threats to the natural environment, a growing social unease and our human need for a sense of wonder and hope.

young eagles