Dazzle Eagles

By Declan White

Sea eagles, Lovedot and Fresh, struggle to breed chicks on the Long Lake where their species was hunted out a hundred years ago. They are attacked by crows, gulls, swallows, swifts and Black-Nest - an investment banker. She owns a water plane and shoots any bird that interferes with her scheme to develop the lake into a commercial runway. The eagles find themselves returned to a world in rapid change with extreme weather and many species vanishing forever as civilization faces annihilation from melting ice flooding the Earth. Radical birds revolt against Black-Nest for poisoning the sky. However, only cooperation between birds, eagles and sympathetic humans can stop Black-Nest and save their natural paradise. This intriguing political allegory - wrapped around a compelling love story with a side serving of slapstick - is a metaphorical treatment of the perennial battle between those who see Nature as an ally and others who want to rebuild her in their own image. Dazzle Eagles is suitable for open-minded adults and children of all ages. The birds seem to stay with readers, nesting in our hearts, and whistling to us to save planet Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Declan White
• Release date: May 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992912116

Book preview

Year One

ONCE UPON A TIME, two eagles fell in love, and fell from the sky into a land where their species had been hunted out one hundred years before, and as they attempted to breed chicks, foes aimed to foil their fairytale.

1 The Eagles

Winter

A FEMALE EAGLE spots a speck in the high skies, and wonders: is this the one for which her heart yearns? But before she can romanticise any further she hits a thermal.

The force of rising air pushes her speedily upwards, over the mountain peaks and towards a tent of blue sky in a grey winter’s day.

The white-tailed sea eagle soars on her mighty wingspan, and wills herself higher when she sees a white tail above her, and becomes excited, a new friend at last.

She has mainly flown solo during the four years of her life. Now, the eagle soars up one, two, three kilometres, spreading her tail feathers to get maximum lift from the updrafts, and as she nears the other bird she notices the yellow legs, brown plumage, the paler neck and the large head with a thick yellow beak.

Yes! One of her own. She is so happy, despite gasping for air. She has never been so high. The other eagle is still above her, but her genetic drive to find a mate and reproduce pushes her heavenwards.

She reckons she is six, six-and-a-half, well, nearly seven kilos, and the other eagle is maybe one third lighter than her. If it is lighter than her, it must surely be a boy. She stands nearly one metre high; taller than the other eagle, and her wingspan is wider, so, if it is smaller than her it has to be a male.

She knows that this difference in the physiology, from the usual larger male and smaller female, will also affect their relationship.

As she comes level with him their eyes meet. She instantly knows that he is the one. In that split second she falls in love, because in wildlife there also exists an enlivening-emotion even stronger than natural instinct, and it happens so quickly, completely overwhelming her.

The eagles keep staring at each other, getting closer. A mile-high sensation rushes through her; a contented feeling that she has never felt before. But she cannot squawk at him because she is taking too little oxygen into her lungs and air sac system.

She tries to increase breathing through her narers - the openings on the side of her curved beak. She notices he does not squawk, but hangs there in silence and looks below.

She peeks down. Oops! She becomes dizzy because she has never been so high. She steadies herself before staring again at a curving Earth with awe-inspiring landscapes of rolling hills, mountain ranges and a long lake dotted with green islands.

Like what you see?

I like everything I see, she replies, looking him directly in the eyes.

Oh, how exciting to meet one of her own. She has been lonely since escaping from the cage in the south mountains. She has roamed these lands, and has mainly foraged for dead animals or hunted along the coastlines, lakes, lowland marshes and rivers.

When she was hungry she would swoop down to the water for its abundant food, and she would sleep on a cliff edge or a branch on the highest tree. There appears to be no real enemies about, just nagging crows and gulls.

However, she remains wary of the strange two-legged creatures who are as tall as horses when they stop slouching and stand upright. These creatures seem to rule over all walkers, crawlers and swimmers on the Earth. They ride in big-wheeled monsters making mechanical noises that tractor across the farmlands, or they travel inside shiny wheeled-snails that motor on black paths across the countryside, driving so fast, but thankfully they do not fly.

The eagles stare into each other’s eyes. They bathe in the thermal, really close together, hanging on their massive wings with fingered ends spread out.

Floating in a higher atmosphere, they are alone with each other, totally contented with one another, needing no one but themselves and only they are so high - rulers of the sky, the freest form alive, king and queen of the lofty altitudes.

The sea eagles shift to stay looking at each other’s eyes, bending their heads and necks, which are noticeably paler than the rest of their bodies.

Your tail is not yet white, he squawks.

She tries looking around at her wedge shaped tail, almost all white except for three black dots.

I will call you Lovedot, he says.

I’d call you fresh.

She begins to descend.

Lovedot, don’t go.

Fresh, I’m out of breath.

Breath, soon you’ll forget all about breath, says Fresh, who spots a spec far off in the western sky, and suspects it is another raptor, possibly a male sea eagle searching for a mate.

Fresh begins to dance. He flutters his wings about, shaking his body, swinging his talons, dancing crazily before her while making high-pitched squawks. His squawking sounds at first like a gull but then increases to squeals and harsh screams, cackling his chirping-squawks as endearing and as passionately as he can in eagle-song.

Oh, Lovedot adores it, and she impulsively dances, getting as crazed-out as her Fresh, enjoying the fun with him, forgetting her lack of breath.

A marvellous sensation hits both of them at the same lucky moment. A raft of love streams into the two eagles as they lock talons with each other, and fall to earth in a spectacular courtship display.

They cartwheel around, squawking as loudly as they can, being attached and making hoops in the high sky while picking up speed.

Yee-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, they laugh, falling groundwards, rolling, and squealing with airborne delight, squawking into life a deep bond of love between them.

Yee-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, cackles Lovedot who cannot believe the thrill of it all; plunging down from a great height with the love of her life locked close to her, and both of them giggling to their hearts’ content.

Splendid emotions surge through Lovedot; oh, the joy of cartwheeling through the open sky, diving with a lover like this and without a care in the world. These are the happiest moments of her life.

Yee-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, they laugh, and they stay locked together; spiralling around, and both eagles impulsively know that they will mate for life. Now, they thunder down to Earth with the land coming up so fast that they must untangle their talons, quickly, and fly apart just before hitting the surface of the Long Lake.

Whoooosh! Lovedot takes flight a few metres above the waves, and she glides along, not fishing, not nothing, just flying with love in her heart for her Fresh. Moments later she feels his presence. Fresh cruises in and flaps alongside his love for life.

As Lovedot goes to land on an ash tree on an island, Fresh flies behind her, and they mate, fluttering their wings to stay in place, flapping in eagle ecstasy, joined together for the first precious moments of breeding.

Afterwards she flies from the Mating Tree, feeling so pleasured with the elation of finding a husband. They glide together, two of the most impressive birds in the world sailing the skies, drifting downwind with their characteristic rectangular shape in flight, floating over the foothills.

Lovedot wonders, am I really flying with the male of my dreams to find a home of our own?

2 Lovedot

LOVEDOT IS a stunningly beautiful eagle, a maturing female, yet she is so vibrantly young, embodying courage, strength and vitality. Her splendid bearings, perfect bodylines and her fragrant femininity send Fresh into jitters.

However, she is a heavily built bird of prey and a more powerful flying machine than Fresh. She is a dynamic hunter, who is better at grappling bigger quarry than the smaller male; indeed, Lovedot is an indomitable feminine leader.

Lovedot and Fresh fly past farmland hills, snowcapped mountains, and homely valleys; two majestic birds, gliding side by side in the open sky, on view to the few who look skyward. As she watches the beautiful Earth below, Lovedot feels a growing love of nature that she hopes will forever swell in her heart.

But they pass over a two-legged creature habitation with wheeled-snails crossing a wide river on a stick path, over and back like an army of ants. Lovedot thinks these creatures live like animals kept in captivity. She wishes to be far away from them because there are so many of them, though Lovedot does not fear these two-legged creatures because they do not fly.

Fresh follows Lovedot up river. Then through eye contact that verges on telepathy, she indicates to him what she is going to do. She swoops down, and in a deft manoeuvre her clawed feet hook a yellowish green fish, swimming near the surface, snatching the roach in flight while immersing only her talons in the river.

She flaps her wings for a few moments above the water while her claws twist the one and a half kilo roach around so that its mouth now faces forward. Lovedot flies with the fish’s head pointing into the wind, and its body stretched out in a straight line, to reduce air resistance and drag. She carries her prey to a shoreline rowan tree, lands on a thick branch, and glances back to see Fresh rising again, going too high, she thinks.

Fresh dives down fast after a fish close to the shore, but the water is too shallow. Fresh’s legs break the surface, and hit the stony bottom with a bang. Ouch! He limps up onto the shore, paining all over.

Oh, she will have to teach him, thinks Lovedot. Fishless Fresh perches beside her on the rowan. Lovedot lowers her head, stands over the roach, but she does not eat the fish until she squawks loudly, claiming it as her own.

The strength of her squawk has Fresh flapping his wings as if he is about to take off before she attacks him. With his smaller body, Fresh’s head looks like a chicken’s compared to Lovedot’s fuller frame and bigger head. While he looks bald she is elegantly complete with feathers on her neck and head.

Fresh well understands her squawk warning all trespassers to stay away from her food. He watches Lovedot hold the fish steady in her talons before her powerful yellow beak tears meat from the bones, which she gulps down. Fresh extends his head but stays away when she slashes off another lump of flesh, and quickly swallows that too.

Lovedot tears a third slice. She looks at Fresh and admires his agile shape, and his animal magnetism has an attraction; just seeing him gives her a joyous feeling of passionate- pleasure. Lovedot leans over to her Fresh. She goes beak to beak, and Lovedot places the lump of roach in Fresh’s mouth.

As he digests the fish, Fresh beams with a pleasure that is beyond the simple tastes of food. But he does not touch Lovedot’s prey. Every time, after she eats, Lovedot tears another piece off, and places it tenderly into her partner’s mouth.

The day darkens. They perch on the rowan, and stare into each other’s eyes, getting closer and closer.

Fresh, why have you a strange red feather on your left wing?

Left wing, hey, you have a green one.

Why?

Why can’t we sleep?

Night falls. Sleep calls. They rest next to each other, and probably in their dreams they are also perched beside one another.

3 Dazzle Island

LOVEDOT WAKES before first light on a cold winter’s morning. She likes this temperate rain forest climate, and thinks this weather is so invigorating. With that thought in her mind she squawks the day awake. Her pitch is comparatively lower than his, created not from vocal cords but in her syrinx, a bony chamber, and it is a shrilling sound.

Fresh hops up from the rowan branch, and spreads his wings for fight or flight, but he sees beside him a calm and beautiful female eagle.

Good morning to you too, Lovedot.

I have been listening to you snoring all night.

All night I have been dreaming of you.

Yee-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, both burst out laughing at each other.

Lovedot takes off, and Fresh follows her up the river that opens out into the Long Lake, which runs fifty kilometres northwards. Its left bank is indented with sheltering bays. The biggest - five kilometres at its widest - juts west between hills and mountains for ten kilometres in a funnel shape to a trout filled river at its head. The bay contains many secluded coves, forest outcrops and contributing streams. Its north shore is laced with a string of a dozen islands.

The eagles fly higher than any other bird as they scan the lake islands, streams, fields, forests and mountains running to all horizons.

On this dark day the light suddenly turns exquisitely bright. Lovedot and Fresh see a rainbow forming from the mountains and arching over the lake until it dazzles down onto an island. Dazzle Island lights up with columns of violets, blues, greens, yellows and reds. Sideways rain glows white when it sweeps through the rainbow’s spectacular colours, raining like fireflies floating on to the island.

The eagles descend towards Dazzle Island, diving at one hundred kilometres-an-hour before stalling their wings, now going down like parachutes. They level out and look at each other, could this be true? Yes, Dazzle Island seems like the home from their dreams.

On this winter’s day the bay of islands looks a desolate place. Ideal, thinks Lovedot. The eagles, flying side by side, make no attempt to conceal themselves as they flap and glide about the bay, investigating everything.

Lovedot notices that the birds enjoy a laid-back life in this backwater. To Lovedot’s delight, all these islands seem free of the two-legged creatures. The ruined walls of an ancient monastic settlement still stand on one large island, where muscly ravens stoutly guard its round tower.

The two-legged creatures live on the northern shore in a clustered habitation - a semi-circle of quaint stone-homesteads resting cosy against each other, and all nesting neighbourly around a picturesque stone harbour. To the east are an old oak forest and a fjord. Oak Fjord makes Lovedot shiver when she sees strange creature-structures on the waterside and a massive creature-mansion on an overlooking hill.

Lovedot sees that the lands are soggy from years of rain, so the two-legged creatures mostly stay indoors. Only a few wheeled-snails are on the creatures’ roads, and the odd snail tractors across the farmlands because they do not wish to be stranded in sodden fields. Lovedot likes this rainy weather that keeps the creatures hidden.

She sees only a few scattered creature-farms on the mainland hills. Not many two-legged creatures live around here, granting her a chance to rear her chicks free from their interference. Lovedot sees many semi-natural habitats between the farm fields and higher again the mountain ranges stretch into one huge natural habitat.

Lovedot sees plenty of fish swimming in the waters surrounding Dazzle Island, which is one kilometre offshore from the creatures’ harbour. Sheep, goats and cattle stopped grazing on Dazzle Island generations ago and it is now four hectares of regenerated natural woodlands. Lovedot cannot spot any creature structures and there is no sign of field patterns. Dazzle has grown naturally into a dwarf wood of alder, ash, birch, elm, hawthorn, sally, sycamore, willow and even oak saplings with no hares or deer to destroy them.

Dazzle Island is a natural habitat about half a kilometre long, and over a hundred metres at its widest point. The island is all bushed up with repopulating trees trying to break out from the scrub, but the five-decades-old wood has grown many trees high enough to hold an eagle’s nest.

Lovedot studies the scrub, which is mainly willow and sally, and she knows that the ground will be covered with chicken weed, cow parsley and sweet vernal grass, but also with nettles and thorny briars to keep the two-legged creatures away.

The eagles keep circling; making sure that Dazzle is safe before landing. Lovedot spots a flock of heron on the east side but she feels no fear of predators on this island. She glides along the northern shore where a carpet of rushes crowd around an opening to a narrowing inlet, which is covered by a dense thicket of bushes and she knows there are fish amid the inlet’s rocks.

Lovedot lands on a sycamore; most of it covered in ivy. The ground about is littered with the sycamore’s decayed winged seeds. Almost instantly, Fresh perches beside her.

Fresh, this is it.

This is it, Lovedot, answers Fresh who immediately flies down to the scrub, and begins gathering dead branches in the grove of sally and willow trees thriving in the damp soil.

Fresh! calls Lovedot. Fresh. Fresh!

But he is too busy collecting the longest willow sticks that he intends later to weave together into a nest like a wicker basket, which one day will hold their chicks.

Fresh. Fresh. Oh, forget it. I’m hungry, squawks Lovedot, flying off when he does not respond.

4 This Is It

Spring

AS LOVEDOT eats a fish on Dazzle Island’s south shore she sees a large hollowed-out log floating by with a plump creature. Plump is catching fish with a stick that he dangles over the side of his log.

She is intrigued by Plump and his fishing-log. But she feigns indifference when Plump’s freckled face lights up with a huge smile on seeing his first white-tailed sea eagle. Lovedot thinks that these two-legged creatures are ungainly beasts with leathery skin, jaws lined with savage teeth, and they breed at an exponential rate.

When Lovedot lands back on the sycamore she discovers that Fresh has spent the last two hours building a nest on an exposed fork of the tree.

Fresh, what are you doing?

Doing? Doing? Doing! Building a nest!

Don’t get cheeky with me!

They squawk so loud that every beast, bird, and creature for miles around can hear them having a squawk-squabble. Something new has come to live here, and locals get an earful of the new neighbours having their first argument.

Fresh points his yellow beak at a stack of collected-sticks he is standing on. You said, ‘this is it’, so I am building our nest here.

Yes, I said ‘this is it’, but not ‘this is it’, not this, this, this yucky tree!

Yucky tree? You said, ‘this is it’.

Yes, ‘this is it’, this island.

This island, Dazzle Island, you said here, so I built here.

I didn’t say here. I said ‘this is it’.

This is it. Yes?

No, yes, Fresh, this island is ‘this is it’, can’t you get it?

Get it? Get it? Get it!

Stop repeating what I say.

I say you say ‘this is it’, not, ‘this is not it’, but, ‘this is it’, so is this not it, or it is not this, or is it ‘this is it?’

What, Fresh, what?

What is it? Or is this it, or is this not it, because your ‘this is it’ has an entirely different meaning to my ‘this is it’, so totally different that your ‘this is it’ is obviously correct. So of course I get it, ‘this is it’.

This is it, is not, ‘this is it’. Can’t you understand?

Understand? Understand!

Stop repeating me! Fresh, ‘this is it’ has to be found on ‘this is it’ island. I had to eat, couldn’t you have waited?

Waited? Waited? Waited!

Stop, Fresh, stop repeating me. Just wait.

Wait? Wait for ‘this is it’, why wait when ‘this is it’ is it, because if I had waited you would be now nagging me why I am not building ‘this is it.’

Fresh is confused. He has toiled for hours. He is tired, never having worked so hard in his life, gathering sticks, intertwining branches and weaving the long pliable willow stems to create an eyrie - a strong platform in the fork of the sycamore tree and a stable nest.

But now he’s being told that his work is in vain. He is so angry he hops to a nearby branch, grabbing it with his beak, trying to snap it off. White-tails don’t usually use their beaks to break branches, but Fresh is fuming, not knowing what he is doing, as he hacks at the branch, taking all his frustrations out on it, until it snaps, and he falls down with his wings still tucked in. Fresh thumps head first into the wet mossy earth with a bang.

Yee-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, Lovedot cannot help herself from laughing.

A dazed Fresh pulls his bruised body off the ground, shakes himself, glares up at Lovedot, squawks loudly at her, Yaap-yaap-yaap, in a piercing high-pitched squeal before flying up in a huff, and he disappears from the island, lost in grey clouds.

5 First Nest

LOVEDOT STAYS perched, allowing her irritation to dissolve, conserving her energy until she has something physical to do, and her anger relents.

Now she thinks that Fresh is not a bad fellow. He seems willing to change his life totally, and forfeit his independence, to give his all for breeding a family? Fresh is handsome, and he is that special someone she has dreamed of cuddling up with, well cuddling him into her inviting self as she is the bigger bird. Oh, and she does desire his slender body, as she feels her own is overweight and too puffed up.

She has to admire his work; already he has stitched together sticks and branches in the fork. His engineering talents are evident, and she can visualise him using his talons to intertwine the old sticks and twigs on top of each other. He has the ability to build their first nest, and the stamina to construct a second nest on a different island.

Lovedot gives thanks to Mother Nature for the ingenious design of an eagle that has taken millions of years of evolutionary trial and error to create her Fresh. Lovedot misses him, and she knows raptors live long lives; the oldest known sea eagle lived thirty-two-years, and she is still so young. She longs for the company of other raptors, wondering why they are not more prevalent in this perfect terrain? Now Lovedot pines for Fresh, as danger approaches.

6 Hooded Crows

A BIG hooded crow, Hardcraw, dives at Lovedot from behind, and just misses pecking the eagle’s neck before he lands on a nearby tree. Hardcraw, the radical leader of the hoodiecrows, perches with his two companions while he studies the invader.

The moment Hardcraw saw the eagles glide in here he knew a new top predator had arrived, changing the pecking order of avian life on the Long Lake forever. Hardcraw instantly vowed to make the eagles’ lives so miserable that they would move on.

He reckons the female eagle is worrying that the male has left her to find a new mate, one who will not argue with him, because he is now gone for nearly eight hours since their very public quarrel.

Hardcraw stands so proud on the top of the nearby tree in his striking plumage of black head and wings contrasting with his ash-grey back and underbelly. He is honoured to be a hoodie and sees himself as an advanced bird at the very pinnacle of avian evolution, for the crows stretch back twenty-five million years, making them one of the oldest bird families on Earth.

Crows eat the eggs and fledglings of ground nesters, but they have mainly flourished because they have the cleverness to not only adapt to two-legged creature pollution but to prosper from it. By devouring creature-food waste the quick-learning crows have gained an edge in the perpetual see-sawing battle of wits between prey and predator, and now their numbers are increasing.

But when Hardcraw sees the male eagle flying from the northern mountains towards the Long Lake, he returns across the bay to the crows’ roost in the ancient woods at Oak Fjord.

7 Migrating

FRESH LANDS on a branch of the sycamore beside Lovedot who is intently watching, the biggest hoodiecrow she has ever seen, flying into the mainland woods over a kilometre away.

Fresh, you stupid male, be in reality now.

Now what are you saying?

Be real, Fresh. You are no longer a juvenile. You have to grow up. You’re a mature adult, and, Fresh, you’d better start acting like one. Stop flying off. Your days of migrating are over.

Through clouded memories, Fresh has flashes from his five years of free flying across lands and seas, and nothing was out there to seriously bother him. He flew to the northern tip, crossed to the next country of highlands, and kept going north, as if something inside him, which he could not explain, was pulling him northwards, but the weather and the late time of year turned against him, so he flew back here.

Wherever Fresh roamed, he was the largest bird of prey. When hungry, he dipped into the seas, and on the second or third attempt he usually caught a fish. The refraction of light entering water does not blur an eagle’s sight, so what is below and above the surface remain in focus. Fresh is yet to fully develop this gift, and he mistakenly believes he has a near sight problem when he gets close to the water.

Fresh, Fresh! Your days of migrating are over. Fatherhood is the greatest journey you will ever take. Fresh, now you settle. Now is for the rest of your life. Do you understand me?

"Understand me, Lovedot, I understand