We’ve been trying to figure why the koi have been huddled on the bottom: we feared a crisis of water chemistry, and a dozen different things—but an adult male Bald Eagle plunging out of the sky?
We put up the winter shelter ring, a 6 foot circle of floating black shade stuff that will cover them in the deep end; and I finally (too late for some of our koi) put up the Scarecrow water jetter, which I hope will scare the blighter off. He may be an endangered species and our national bird, but he’s not persona grata in our back yard at the moment!
Oh, some ended up as sushi? how terrible.
Not what I expected to read when I checked the blog. OMG.
We are up-set.
Holy cats. Isn’t he a ‘fur piece’ inland? Did he actually nab one of the koi, or have you been able to get a nose count yet (if I were a koi, I’d be on the bottom of the pond for the rest of the day!) FiL in NJ reports seeing a nesting pair on his daily birding walks, so I guess it’s not too unusual.
He got at least two, maybe more. They breed here in the area. The river is a mile away, and Latah Creek about 2-3 miles, nothing for one of his kind. He can darned well go work for a living.
We live by a river in Northern Michigan. The first summer we lived here we saw an eagle carrying a medium sized trout, flying upstream. My husband, who has a deep voice, cried out “Look, he caught a fish!”. Scared the eagle into dropping the trout. whoops, no dinner. Herons and Eagles do not usually catch and release.
That’s awful. It sounds like they have good hiding instincts, but being in a small pond there isn’t a whole lot they can do until some of the vegetation fills out. Any netting you can put out until that happens? Gotta send a strong message. Those birds have good memory and might keep coming back for more unless it becomes too much trouble for its worth.
Because our weather has persisted in the 40’s at night (2 months late in warming up) we’re unable to get the vegetation going—but we do have the sunshade back on, which nearly fills the deep end. We’re appealing to our friend who has been helping us with the bridge to get us the pieces asap so we can span the pond with a large shadow that will also give the pond cover.
My wife, Diane, says this reminds her of when they opened the Wild Animal Park north of San Diego. Local raptors carried off some of the smaller animals, and cattle on local ranches would smell the big cats and respond by forming defensive scrums.
I’ve seen bald eagles in Montana — and I saw one here in town a couple years back, as I crossed the river on my way to work. I didn’t know they came as far north as Calgary. Inland isn’t an issue for these birds, but water is.
It’s so sad about the koi, what with them just coming back from winter. Do let us know who didn’t make it. After the fish story a while back, I am sort of hoping Renji is still around (almost as much for his personality as because he’s named for my favorite Bleach character.)
I just spent the best part of a week to photograph some bald eagles without success. I should have staked out your garden.
Latah Creek and the state park adjacent, not to mention our garden. The pirate!
They can actually be fairly far inland as long as there is water. I live in rural Indiana and they restocked a very large man made reservoir close to here with bald eagles some years ago and we now have have breeding colonies.
We have actually seen them in and around our 4 acre lake several times the last two years. We don’t mind them taking a few of our stocked fish (not much we could do anyway). Besides, we saw one of a triple – two adults and a juvenile – take a squirrel. Since we have had major squirrel damage on the order of totalled vehicles because of chewed gas lines, we cheer when we see a raptor. Sorry about your loss though. That is just a little bit bold. People with koi ponds around here have a much greater problem with great blue herons and the like.
Wow! Eagles yet! I hope your various methods keep him away. Don’t want to read that you have become an avian lunch counter.
I am not sure how the fish in the pond in our local park survive until the lotus fill out. It’s *really* something to see an osprey dive into a small pond and grab a large goldfish. It can be a little disconcerting to families. (Well, to anyone. Those guys are huge!) The great blues sit at the edge and LOOM. I think the surviving fish are wiley old guys that know how to hide n the weeds.
We used to live on a canal at the edge of a swamp. There was one clever blue heron who quickly figured out that the kids (and some adults) in our apartment building would feed the fish in the canal. Whenever he saw someone approach the water, he would flap over to a convenient overhanging tree and wait for the fishies to come nibble at the bread crusts. Bam! Dinner! It started to remind me of diners inspecting the lobster tank at a restaurant.
While I sympathize with your losses, I have to say that if I were to lose fish, losing them to bald eagles would be a lot neater than raccoons, cats, or herons! On the other hand, I know how I grumble about gophers, so I can fully understand “nature” being a bit much. It’s the circle of life and all that, but I sometimes wish it would happen somewhere that is not MY yard.
My mom had the disconcerting experience of losing a dove to a redtail hawk. She would take their cage out on her table on the deck to let them get some sun. Opened up the cage, the male hopped up to perch on the cage door, and the hawk swooped down and got him. Just a couple of feet from my mom! And I have gotten to see a sick sparrow get nabbed neatly by a Cooper’s hawk while it was sitting on my patio. He came swooping in under the patio cover, hit the bird about 6 feet from the patio door, turned neatly on a wingtip and flew off. Very impressive to watch!
My grandfather sank a couple of pipes in his pond to give the goldfish a preditor shelter. Worked a treat
Well if you consider we’ve got a pond shaped like a 20 foot long copy of Scotland, England, and Wales—let me say that Hadrian’s Wall is about to rise on the Scottish border. Our 12 foot bridge is going across the narrowest part of the pond, and it will mean, since the eagle comes out of the north and takes off from Brighton, he’s going to go splat into Hadrian’s Wall if he tries to poach the deep end of the pond.
Invest in some Radar Controlled Flak Guns 🙂
I know it’s bad of me and I do feel sorry for the Koi but part of me does want to shout “go! raptor! go!”. Most I’ve ever had checking out my pond was an elderly cat that ran away as soon as the mutant goldfish that had eaten everything else in the pond, give it the “eyeball”.
I was driving down the river road here last year and spotted an osprey struggling with a fish that must have been a foot long. It was pretty incredible to watch the bird coming up the road, bobbing up and down on every wing stroke with a huge fish. All I could think at the time was PLEASE don’t drop that on my car!