An eagles parking lot party? It sounds like a bunch of tailgators blasting “Take It Easy ” and “Hotel California” while they drink beer and eat spicy chicken wings. However, the video I’ve posted below is actually a wild scene of a large flock of bald eagles gathering to party down on some fish fileting trash they spotted in the back of somebody’s pick-up truck in Unalaska, Alaska.
The video is getting some rave reviews, like this commenter on the KUCB community news page:
“Awesome dumpster chicken footage. In alaska Eagles are just seagulls without the s.”
I’m pretty sure that by ‘s,’ he’s referring to the word that doesn’t rhyme with feces.
Be that as it may, KUCB reporter Stephanie Joyce said that multiple people phoned the police when they spotted the bald eagles parking lot party taking place at the Safeway grocery store in Unalaska.
Public Safety Director Jamie Sunderland told her that an officer checked into it and found around 40 eagles attending the impromptu gathering. The officer invited the unnamed truck owner to deal with the problem, but as Sunderland wryly described the situation:
“They were trying to get rid of it, but there were so many eagles that they were, I think, somewhat alarmed to go near the vehicle, because it was just being swarmed by eagles.”
The truck owners weren’t cited since there was no mess and they really didn’t do anything wrong. Apparently, the eagles picked the fish clean before mere human mortals managed to scatter the birds.
Startling as the video footage may be to most of us in the lower 48 states, several cynical souls in Alaska said it was just another day in Unalaska and not news at all.
Apparently they’re right. The second video is just completely random footage from a 2010 video of a 30 bird bald eagle party filmed in Unalaska by YouTuber Matt Honan. And I could have posted even more video from any number of other bald eagle gatherings.
Tim Moyer for Channel 8 TV KIAL captured the parking lot wonderful footage. On their channel, KIAL describes themselves as “a low-power community television station located in the beautiful Aleutian Islands of Alaska.”
And here’s Matt Honan’s video:
Wow. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a bald eagles parking lot party like that for yourself?
[bald eagle photo courtesy anonymous artist via Wikimedia Commons]