Bald Eagle

 

Eagle / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you would like to own this painting

SOMETIMES, I HEAR an eagle call, here in Wachapreague. They are around - I've seen them flying over the yard several times, and, many times, in the fields nearby.

 One Sunday morning, I watched one devour a deer that had been killed on the Wachapreague Road. He stayed there for longer than I could, and he was apparently unafraid of me - or at least, willing to tamp down his fear in the face of such bounty. 

The bald eagle was chosen as the emblem of America on June 20,  1782, because of his strength and good looks, and because it existed nowhere but on this continent. 

Benjamin Franklin derided the selection, calling the bald eagle a bird of "bad moral character." The bald eagle, Franklin wrote, "does not get his living honestly, you may see him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk, and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him..." 

Franklin goes on (you can read more here) and suggests that the turkey would be a better choice. 

Lazy carrion-eaters though they may be, their majesty always captures my heart. 

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Coda

"A year from now, you will wish you had started today." 

- Karen Lamb