“Eagles, eagles, eagles!” that’s all I hear. You know they’re a rather lazy lot, perching on snags, conserving energy. Even when they fly, they haven’t the decency to exert much effort, flapping just enough to stay afloat.

But as soon as the sun provides some thermals, I – the marsh hawk - am aloft– searching, scanning and surveying the marsh flats of the Delaware Bay for a morsel. Lazy eagles just perch, sometimes sitting upon muskrat mounds waiting for the meaty dears to make an unsuspecting entrance into daylight - likely their last. Even box turtles are not beneath their beady-eyed attention.

I used to have a name befitting my environs: the upright ones called me “marsh hawk” and some still do. Now the scientists who decide such things call me a “northern harrier,” as if I can make any sense of that. On the bayshore marshes I make my presence known with a steady cadence of two to three wing beats and a slight teetering glide. My wing tips are held gracefully above my body, while the eagles’ deep-beat a wave and cut through the air, like a hot knife through butter. They could never match my graceful dance across the tops of the spartina. Darned, I’m much greater fun to watch that those pesky louts – those eagles!

But come each February, thousands of uprights assemble and pay homage to those majestic large oafs. They call it a festival and the upright ones can’t wait to catch sight of boring eagles.

Now I may seem a bit overly sensitive to you, but, come on, my performance is nothing shy of spectacular: near constant flight compared to my raptor counterparts. Eye-piercing scans of the mud flats, with swift dives into the cord grass and fast recoveries when I don’t succeed. Often my fellow hunters and I team-play the rodents of the meadow in a display that is a bit of a dance. The males of our breed – gray ghosts – often hunt the farms and their numbers are far fewer. But how you would enjoy seeing us gals in our graceful maneuvers, as we teeter in unison low over the surface of the marsh and make our swift attacks in our rosy-brown plumage accented by a white tail band! Personally, I prefer the vast meadows of Turkey Point on the Egg Island Wildlife Management Area to the Maurice River area – but that’s just me.

If you’re an eagle fancier you will likely see them soaring or lazing around, making almost no effort and still stealing the show. The upright ones - so easily entertained. The eagles are bigger, their numbers keep growing, so they’re guaranteed center stage.

But, please, don’t forget to look for me – the smaller, the mightier, the more agile and a far better entertainer, the greatest hunter of the marsh plain. If you can call out “Eagles!” you can call out my name too. “Northern Harrier, northern harrier, northern harrier!” Say it!

CU on the River!