[obol] Bale Eagle article

[Dan Gleason]

Forgive me. I am going to do a short rant here. I won't be at all  
offended if you chose to ignore it.

Last Sunday, the Register Guard (Eugene) ran a story about Bald  
Eagles. Some things about that article are bothering me, so I need to  
set the record straight.

At no point in my interview with the reporter did I say that Bald  
Eagles can be seen in fields looking for dead mice. What I did say is  
that eagles are often found in the fields at this time of year where  
they are attracted to the afterbirths of sheep, any dead lambs or  
other carrion. I never said mice at any time. (Perhaps he thought  
"afterbirth" wasn't printable in a family paper?). I did not say that  
these are not "noble" birds or suggest that there was anything of  
disreputable character at all. I did say that their call is not the  
loud, impressive call that some people seem to think they should  
make. (I was once told, while staffing an Audubon booth at the county  
fair, that the recording we were using for Bald Eagle was wrong. The  
person telling me so informed me that these are big, strong birds  
with loud, harsh calls, not ''silly little sounds" like we were  
playing. Of course, this was the same person who told me that we also  
had the state bird wrong. "It's the Red-winged Blackbird, not a  
Meadowlark.") I also said that Bald Eagles will steal food from  
others if the opportunity presents itself. But this is not a  
statement of judgement, as implied by the article, but simply a  
statement of fact. These birds evolved in the way they did and are  
well-suited for the life they lead. Nature is as we find it and we  
should not make moral judgments about what we find, as was so often  
done in older writing about nature.

There is also an impression that I have said that most of the birds  
are wandering. The reporter apparently misunderstood what I was  
saying. In a sense, many of the birds are "wanderers" as many  
individuals spend the winter here but breed farther to the north. I  
said that many of the birds in the valley are immature birds and that  
these immature individuals often wander great distances from where  
they were hatched before they reach breeding age and establish a  
breeding territory of their own.

A map of where to see Bald Eagles near Eugene was also included. One  
of the locations listed on that map was Spencer Butte. Anyone who has  
been to Spencer Butte knows that it is not a good place to look for  
eagles. The butte that I was talking about to the reporter was  
Skinner Butte, located on the south shore of the Willamette River,  
just upstream from Delta Ponds where a pair of Bald Eagles have been  
regular visitors this winter.

At the end of the interview, the reporter asked me if watching eagles  
was simply a hobby of mine so I informed him of some of my background  
(teach Field Ornithology at UO, write about birds, etc.). I also told  
him that I write a monthly column about birds in the newspaper for  
which he works. He was unaware of that fact. (If he was unaware of  
who I was, why was he calling me for answers?)

I have often been misquoted by the press in the past and was afraid  
it might happen again. Since I have been asked about this article a  
few times, I decided to post what I did and did NOT say.

Thanks for putting up with my rant.

Dan Gleason
-------------
Dan Gleason
dan-gleason at comcast.net
541 345-0450


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.oregonstate.edu/mailman/private/obol/attachments/20070301/c8f6adea/attachment.htm