It doesn’t take eagle eyes to see eagles from a kayak

“Hey! There’s one!” Phil Warner exclaimed, pointing his kayak paddle toward a distant feathered shape flying toward us.

A moment later he grumbled, “Wait … only a seagull.”

Not long afterward, Phil called out excitedly again, “Look! Up high, 2 o’clock!”

“Too small,” I said. Sure enough, it was a red-tailed hawk.

As Phil and I paddled north on the Connecticut River off Lyme earlier this week, we saw all manner of ducks, Canada geese, hawks and swans, but not one of the magnificent raptors we hoped to observe: a bald eagle.

“Maybe we’re too early in the season,” Phil speculated.

“Or too late,” I replied. “With this year’s crazy weather, maybe they’ve already flown home.”

Every winter for the past decade or so, as loyal readers may recall, friends and I have paddled this stretch of river to watch eagles that migrate from New Hampshire, Vermont and parts farther north to fish in open water. In past outings, we’ve seen as many as a couple dozen between Hamburg Cove and Selden Island, but we wondered if this year’s migration had been disrupted by epic ice jams that clogged the river during last month’s bitter cold snap. It took three Coast Guard icebreakers a week to clear the channel, an event that made national news.

A few table-sized remnants of the monstrous jumble of floes drifted past, but the river and shoreline were largely free of ice. In previous years, we’ve had to use our kayaks as icebreakers in a few narrow, frozen-over sections.

While Phil and I paddled, we heard the rumble of a boat engine behind us — a charter vessel taking parka-clad passengers on an eagle-watch tour. They huddled on deck, poised with cameras, spotting scopes and binoculars.

“You guys are crazy!” one of the passengers shouted good-naturedly.

He was too far out of earshot to hear Phil’s reply: “Crazy? We’d be crazy if we were out here not wearing life jackets.”

I added, “Plus, we don’t have to pay for a cruise. It’s free in a kayak.”

Phil and I were outfitted in the same waterproof gear we wore a few weeks earlier to watch seals on Fishers Island, a few miles off the southeastern Connecticut coast. As was the case then, we managed to keep warm and dry despite temperatures in the 40s with a brisk wind. Both of us have paddled comfortably in considerably colder conditions.

By the time we reached the mouth of Selden Creek, less than four miles from our launch site at the end of Elys Ferry Road, the eagle sightseeing cruise boat had turned around ahead of us and was motoring back downriver. Apparently it, too, had no luck.

After it passed us, I heard passengers shouting and thought perhaps they were greeting us again, but, as I turned around, a giant shadow passed over. I looked up. “Eagle! Eagle!” The sight of these magnificent birds in flight never fails to take my breath away. Barely flapping its giant wings, which extended some seven feet from tip to tip, it wheeled and swooped no more than 50 feet above us. Propelled by a south wind, it soon soared out of sight.

Five minutes later, we saw another eagle, then a couple more.

“Finally!” I blurted. Phil and I planned to circle Selden Island before heading back, but we decided against venturing farther north to Gillette Castle, which would add a couple miles to a 10-mile paddle. We were mindful that we would be fighting a headwind on the return trip, and dark clouds that eventually would produce a snowstorm had begun to form.

No sooner had we entered Selden Creek at the north end of the island than another eagle launched from its perch in a pine tree not 50 yards in front of us. The bird landed not far away and then took off again while we paddled past.

“Sorry,” Phil apologized. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

When I first paddled on the Connecticut River decades ago, eagles and other large birds

of prey were a rare sight, but after the government banned the insecticide DDT, which caused eggs to crack prematurely, and passed the Clean Water Act, there's been a remarkable avian and biological resurgence.

Today, the Lower Connecticut, teeming with wildlife, has been designated as a National Heritage River; The Nature Conservancy calls the estuary a “Last Great Place,” one of only 40 in the Northern Hemisphere.

It is a wonderful place for birds, as well as for kayakers. Later in the season, the shoreline will be alive with great blue heron, osprey, egrets, sandpipers, terns and countless other species.

Then, in late summer through early fall, hundreds of thousands of tree swallows will descend on nearby Goose Island during their annual migration.

“It's a river for all seasons,” I said as we paddled back to the launch site.