A friend called Saturday to report what he viewed as an unlikely development on a Connecticut River island near his South Deerfield family homestead sitting in the evening shadow of North Sugarloaf.

There, upon an island he has passed daily for more than 60 years, he noticed something high, large and new in a tree. Upon closer inspection, he discovered it was a bald eagles’ nest, a big one in progress. Ever since, he’s monitored it often, watching construction that’ll accept a comfortable spring brood, one or both mates in it at times.

One day, heading toward the nest from Sunderland Bridge in broad daylight, he noticed one of the eagles on the ground picking at something along the perimeter of a turf field. He at first suspected the large, white-headed raptor was eating something, perhaps a rabbit or woodchuck or wild turkey, all distinct possibilities at the location. But, no, the bird wasn’t eating at all, but rather gathering long, dry, brown grass with which to line its woody nest. That he knew when the bird took flight — peregrine falcon nests in the Mount Sugarloaf cliffs above — flying low and carrying a beakful toward the nest. Having never witnessed such a sight, he wondered aloud what his late father would have thought had he seen it. When his dad died unexpectedly at his much-loved Vermont hunting camp more than 40 years ago, there were no eagles or peregrine falcons near his home. Poisons, barnyard snipers and hunters who objected to predators competing with them for small game had taken a mighty toll on our national bird and symbol, not to mention other birds and beasts of prey. You know the mindset: kill my rabbits or turkeys or partridge or raccoons, my barnyard fowl or lambs, or especially my deer and you’re dead, Dude.

Well, times have changed. Eagles, hawks, owls and falcons are now protected, and today all are much more common locally than they ever have been in my lifetime. Predictably, we’re again beginning to hear grumbling objectors complaining about dwindling gamebird, waterfowl and small-game populations that birds of prey are impacting. Yep, now raptors are right up there with coyotes as public enemy No. 1 among some sportsmen who don’t want to hear about the interactive, complementary predator/prey relationship. Fact is that predators makes prey smarter, more cautious and elusive than the same species in habitats minus natural predators. There is much to be read about this interesting topic, which reared its ugly head after Teddy Roosevelt and his big-game-hunter ilk went the route of ridding the West of mountain lions, wolves, bears and coyotes to build deer, moose and elk populations, among others. When all of those predators except resilient coyotes became endangered species, go figure, deer, antelope, elk and mountain goat populations multiplied too fast, ate too much of the forest understory, died of malnutrition and ultimately became easy, open targets for hunters. Look it up if you don’t believe it. It’s current. Hunters with a conscience didn’t want to shoot easy targets grazing out in the open prairie with no fear of danger.

But, let us not digress … back to the eagles, a follow-up to last week’s topic of eagles preying on wild turkeys, as depicted in a west Northfield photo published here last week. Though I had never thought about eagles hunting turkeys, it made perfect sense. Now, since that column hit the street, I have had the opportunity to speak with one of my go-to guys about subjects related to birds, wildlife and habitats, all of which he passionately studies in daily observation. That man would be brother-in-law John Twomey, whose book, “Retiring To Not From,” is now in its third printing. A retired UMass professor, the book is about his lifestyle on an expansive, secluded, Waldo County, Maine gentleman’s farm, where he lives a Thoreauvian existence while managing mixed acreage as a wildlife refuge. It has been a hit among back-to-the-earthers and folks seeking a simple, efficient, off-the-grid lifestyle similar to his. Yes, this cerebral man is enjoying what used to be known as “The Good Life,” fashioned by Scott and Helen Nearing, first in Jamaica, Vt., then in Harborside, Maine, where they died and left their Good Life Center for posterity.

The man family and friends call “Buzz” phoned last weekend as he often does to speak to my wife and his sister, and I took the opportunity to inquire what he knew about eagles preying on turkeys. Bingo! A subject he was eager to discuss.

“Oh yes,” was his knee-jerk response on speaker from my wife’s chair. “In fact, my neighbor just called the other day to tell of a bald eagle taking a turkey outside his home. He watched the whole thing play out. It’s getting to be a common sight. We have 600 nesting pairs of eagles here in Maine. If you want to see video go to YouTube and search ‘eagle vs. turkey.’”

He added that he always knows when an eagle is around his slice of nirvana, where turkeys and deer are common sights in the hayfields and lowbush blueberries surrounding his home and outbuildings. He said gobbler flocks are always keenly aware of eagles and great horned owls, two mortal enemies.

“It doesn’t matter how high the eagle is soaring, the turkeys always detect it and display an alarm signal by spreading their tails and running and partially flying to the edge of the woods,” he said. “The eagle can be a speck in the sky and they see it because they are always wary. When I see a group of full-grown toms spread their tails and run and/or fly to the woods edge, I always know there’s an eagle about. Interestingly, I have never seen toms react this way to hawks or ravens.”

He expanded upon his observations by saying hens with young display the same tail spreading and fleeing to the woods (as long as the young are big enough to run well or fly) when a hawk, eagle or sometimes even a raven pass by.

“From what I have observed, the two behaviors appear to be almost identical — the difference being that toms do this in reaction to eagles, and hens with young react this way to eagles as well as hawks and ravens.”

So, there you have it from an astute observer who studies wildlife relationships in his leisure. Plus, having always raised chickens, he’s always tuned-in to birds and beasts of prey.

Old buddy Tom White — known to many as an affable Northfield potter, avid hunter/naturalist and plain old nice guy — phoned Monday morning. Though I missed his call, he left a message and we hooked up later that afternoon.

Always monitoring wildlife around his rustic home and studio, where his domestic turkeys have been known to attract wild cousins for him to assess each spring. White had an interesting observation to share. It seems that inspection of his weekend trail camera had revealed three antlered whitetail bucks. Imagine that! There it was, pushing toward March, long after most deer have shed their antlers, and all three were still sporting headgear — two pronghorns, one with brow tines making it a 6-pointer, and a big, handsome, trophy 8-pointer he recognized.

“I’ve seen the big one before but never when hunting,” he said, which would not be surprising to anyone familiar with elusive big bucks. Think about it: buck grow large due to wisdom. Yeah, yeah, I know some may be lucky. But wisdom trumps dumb luck any day of the week, and tends to be longer lasting.

So there you have it. Three more Franklin County bucks still wearing their antlers this late in the game. Interesting indeed. Then again, word from Leverett during blackpowder season had it that some of the bucks being killed were losing their antlers on the drag from the woods. Different strokes for different folks in nature’s games.

Meanwhile, on the home front Monday morning, day after the snowstorm, I cut several tracks of the same solitary deer frolicking through the Christmas trees populating Sunken Meadow along the Green River. Given the erratic behavior displayed by the foot-free tracks, that deer appeared to have enjoyed its post-storm romp through the bottomland, bounding here and there, walking elsewhere. The tracks meandered here and there around and through the meadow, where I kept bumping into them walking the perimeter.

In one spot, approaching a large riverside apple tree that always drops early apples in the summer, I noticed straight-line tracks ahead. When I reached them, I discovered they were about five feet apart in a straight line, which seemed odd to me. I examined them carefully to confirm they were made by a deer, then backtracked maybe 12 steps to inspect the stride, which remained consistent and seemed long to me.

“Gee,” I thought. “I wonder if that deer is walking on three legs, thus a long stride caused by a hop?” But, no, that was definitely not the case. This deer just had a long stride; or at least it looked longer than normal to me. Even more intriguing, it wasn’t the track of the trophy buck I had bumped many times last year. I know that buck’s wide, heifer-like hoofprint. This long-strider’s prints, heels prominent, were narrower and without question not his.

Hmmmmm?

Well, that set of tracks continued bugging me long after passing them and, once I got home, I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I measure them with the chestnut crook cane that always accompanies my walks? Then, I would have an accurate measurement for discussion.”

The reason for my diligence regarding this subject was that I had shared the observation with White on the phone Monday afternoon and my description was greeted with silence, as though he was silently questioning it. I just let it pass.

Next day, walking the same route, the tracks were melted a little but still intact and exactly the same distance apart as the previous day. So, I laid down my cane, marked the top of the crook and found the stride to be a cane and a half long. Once I got home, I put a yardstick to the cane and discovered it was 37 inches, making the stride about 56 inches, just shy of five feet. Maybe that’s not a long stride for a deer, but it stuck out to my eye and I have seen many deer tracks. No, it wasn’t over five feet as I had suspected, but it was basically a five-foot stride, longer than usual, in my opinion.

Enough of that … but sticking to the same subject of neighborhood deer, my friend and neighbor who spotted 15 baldies in back of his home last week saw them again, this time heading down to his yard from Smead Hill in the evening. You can bet the folks at the Alexlee House up the road have seen those deer many times, likely eating their ornamental bushes.

Which reminds me: it’s getting to be that time of the year to drive through the upper Country Farms section of Greenfield by the intersection of Eunice Williams and Leyden roads, where many deer can be seen just before dark coming out of their yard on a southern exposure above the Webb Farm. It’s a sight to behold. Well worth the drive. And if you want to see more deer, take Barton Road home. They seem to like the ornamental bushes in people’s yards there, too, after a long winter.

Don’t dilly-dally. The Country Farms deer phenomenon is here today, gone tomorrow.

Damp, cool air, corn snow, puddles in meadow depressions, treacherous ice booby-trapping nighttime, backyard paths — all signs that spring is creeping in. Plus, just Tuesday morning, taking out a fresh pailful of ash and embers from my woodstove, a crimson cardinal was perched in an ornamental cherry singing his happy tune, an even better harbinger.

Down where I walk, little worth reporting. One lonely raccoon’s tracks traveling northward along the upper hayfield’s rim, across a double-rutted farm trail and over the escarpment to high, steep, undercut refuge. Also, random coyote traffic. Not much. They’re probably hunting rabbits. As for deer, well, some sign is starting to reappear, but nothing like the fall and early winter. They’re around but there’s nothing in the hayfields for them these days. Queried this week, my friend and upper Greenfield Meadows neighbor reported seeing 15 in his yard recently just before dark.

“I counted them twice,” he said. “Fifteen. They were out back along a line of white pines, feeding toward Green River Road. They wandered around, regrouped and headed up Smead Hill for the night.”

“Did one appear much larger than the rest?” I inquired.

“Yes, there was one big one that really stuck out, and some that were much smaller than the rest.”

“Antlers?”

“None.”

This final report told me the big trophy buck I’ve tracked for months is still touring the neighborhood. Another neighbor had reported in December that he often saw eight does feeding along his fence line. I know one of those deer had been killed in the road during a snowstorm soon after that report. Now 15 in my buddy’s yard, not a mile away from where the eight were regularly appearing. Do the math. The winter neighborhood herd has picked up eight deer since December, likely three or four bucks that have shed their antlers. Looks like next summer will be a good one for deer sightings around home after the does drop their fawns.

Something else I’ve often seen over the past 10 months is bald eagles, never more than one but one many times around the same location. They may be different birds, or perhaps the same one over and over. Who knows? Most often, I notice one circling high above, easily identifiable by its white head and tail. Another time I wrote about jumping one out of a riverside tree and watching it gracefully fly upstream over a dwindling brood of common mergansers. Then, there was the day after a fresh snow when I watched one circle a hayfield low and perch in broad daylight in a tall tree between a Plain Road home and a squash field. A half-hour later, it was still there, its white head signaling its presence in a naked gray tree, most likely a soft maple.

Last week, a neighbor stopped by and later called after his knocks had gone unanswered. I don’t know how I missed them. He had come straight to my home after passing two low-flying bald eagles headed east toward the Green River, just upstream from the Greenfield Pool at the Colrain-Plain roads’ crotch. Later that same day — you can’t make it up — an email from west Northfield reader Bill Copeland arrived with an interesting photo attached. After viewing last week’s photo of a deer’s remains after coyote predation, he wanted to share a backyard photo (below) of a bald eagle on the ground, wings stretched high, talons securing the wild turkey it was devouring to the ground.  The eagle dwarfs the turkey, which looks more like a partridge underneath the giant raptor.

“I meant to send you this earlier,” Copeland wrote. “Your latest column (of the deer remains) reminded me. Though not a good photo and maybe not rare, this sight of eagle-on-turkey in west Northfield is a lot gorier than eagle-on-fish.”

Honestly, I never pondered eagles preying on turkeys, but it makes a lot of sense given turkeys’ aggressive response to owl hoots emitted by hunters trying the initiate gobbling. Also, it offers another explanation why eagles are attracted to my agricultural neighborhood, where there is no shortage of turkeys to go along with fish, waterfowl, woodchucks, rabbits and many other prey. Though I can’t say for sure, I have an idea an eagle or great horned owl could maybe even take down an infant fawn embarking upon its maiden voyage out of the nest on four shaky legs. I wouldn’t bet against it.

Live and learn.

Winter is a time of random opportunity and peril in the wild kingdom, two realities that are vividly displayed by two reader correspondents who sent photos to my home last week.

The first photos arrived a week ago by snail-mail, displaying a big, live, hungry bear. The others came by email and showed a dead, devoured deer.

First, the bear, likely a big bruin in the 250- to 300-pound range. It is said that males are more apt than pregnant or nursing females to leave their dens in search of food during hibernating winter thaws, thus my assertion that it was a boar. Plus, it’s a big sucker.

Anyway, someone dropped the envelope containing three trail-camera photos of the black beast into my mailbox a week ago. On the envelope was scratched a handwritten note that read: “Gary, notice the date on these photos 1/24/18.” Likely from my neighborhood, I have an idea who provided them. It doesn’t matter. The photos do.

I must admit that when I read the envelope, I was not expecting bear photos. I assumed I had been sent photos of an antlered buck, given recent discussion about the timing of bucks shedding their antlers, a phenomenon that can differ greatly from deer to deer. But, no, it wasn’t an antlered buck at all, but rather this large bruin, patch of white snow on his rump from sitting, out and about on what was probably one of those foot-free spring-like days we all enjoyed following three weeks of deep-freeze. Check out the accompanying photo on Page D3. You’ll get a kick out of the white patch of snow on his butt.

I have to wonder if this wasn’t the same bear a man from up on top of the ridge south of my home wrote to me about a month or so back. This correspondent was bemused by a bear he had often seen coming to his birdfeeder when it should have been hibernating. He figured it was a big male, one he dissuaded from birdfeeder feedings by stinging its rump with a pumped-up BB gun.

The man was concerned that maybe the beast was injured, though it displayed no signs of a limp or disorientation. No, probably just a healthy bear living in a nearby den with knowledge that an unnatural food supply was available for easy picking.

As for the deer photos, they came from Brian Delaney, a Frontier Regional School teacher who came upon the gruesome scene walking his dog in West Deerfield. Tom and Ben Clark are OK with winter mortality of deer, browse foragers that eat fruit-tree buds, reducing the fall harvest. “Every bud they eat is one less apple,” son Ben told me one day when I was on a December cider run.

Delaney, took photos of the carnage scene with his cell phone and sent them my way when he got home.

“Just in from crispy morning hike with my young German shepherd down Old Albany Road,” he wrote. “Shayla sniffed out the deer-kill along a stream and I was surprised at its size. I first noticed many coyote tracks, then signs of a struggle or takedown. I took some pics, then noticed a left hind leg with a significant fracture that may have been the result of an automobile or train collision.”

He sent two photos of the torn-up deer carcass, a pathetic sight winter hunters, woodsmen, snowshoers, cross-country skiers and snowmobilers are apt to encounter. In Mother Nature’s game, such a deer’s demise is a coyote jackpot. Just the way it is.

“Thanks, Brian,” I wrote. “Mother Nature can indeed be cruel. Or is it not just harsh reality?”

He quickly responded with: “I go with the harsh reality of the big game called life.”

Enough said.

*****
The preliminary numbers are in and 2017 Massachusetts deer hunters have already set an all-time harvest record with 13,220 kills. The archery (5,191) and primitive-firearm (2,754) also experienced record harvests. A breakdown of the rest of the seasons shows 109 kills on the one-day Sept. 30 youth hunt, four during the three-day (Nov. 2 through 4) paraplegic hunt and 5,162 shotgun kills. If the trends follow the norm, the final harvest numbers figure to only grow.

The previous record (12,249) was set in 2016.

The Bay State deer herd is estimated at 95,000. MassWildlife’s deer-density management goal is 10 to 15 per square mile. Some oversaturated eastern Mass. areas have densities reaching 80 per square mile. Thus, after decades of western Mass. carrying the total harvest during most of the 20th century, the tables have turned in the 21st and eastern Mass. hunters are bagging far more deer than folks in this neck of the woods, where the forests are bigger, the deer-densities thinner. Plus, because of better success rates in suburban areas, our hunter-density has significantly diminished. Central and eastern Mass. hunters are no longer traveling here to hunt deer. Why should they? Their chances are far better close to home.

It’s too early to evaluate and compare the zone-by-zone harvest breakdown. We’ll wait for the final harvest before going there.

A blue, super moon in the midnight sky can stir thoughts to the surface, spin a man off to pondering …  especially Cancer moon children like me.

Enter a topic I’ve been exploring in recent days, one focused on our government and its approach to the air, the water, the forests and wetlands. The prevailing Washington wisdom these days seems to be, “Hey, if there’s a profit to be made, that’s a good thing, environment be damned.” Well, maybe so if you’re coming from the exploitive capitalistic perspective of Mammon’s kingdom headquartered at  Wall Street.

Then again, there are those of us who view it a little differently, like, “Look at the fires and floods and ocean storms, the melting glaciers and rising sea levels, the mudslides. Don’t you understand that this is our work? That we’re destroying the planet on which we live for the love of money and corporate greed?” Well, to some, including those today pulling the strings, it doesn’t matter. Fossil fuels add up to riches. Keep burning them, the more the merrier. Let the good times roll.

What I find particularly interesting is that there were canaries in the coal mine many, many years ago, prophetic little yellow birds with credible warnings countered at every turn by shouts from corporate spinmeisters. My god! Rachel Carson, her of “Silent Spring” fame, has been dead for more than a half-century. She saw it coming and screamed a clarion call for help. Then came a chorus of articulate support from fellow deep-ecologists like Edward Abbey (Monkey-Wrench Gang,” “Desert Solitude”), Gary Snyder (“Good, Sacred, Wild,” “The Practice of the Wild”), Wendell Berry (“The Gift of Good Land,” “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”), Doug Peacock (“Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness”), Gary Paul Nabhan (“Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation”), Peter Matthiessen, David Quammen and Robin Wall Kimmerer. That’s just a small sampling of the voices of reason. Yet now we’re back to the “good old days,” when conservation and its protective  regulations  were dirty, filthy words worthy of censoring.

You have to wonder how we got to where we currently are and who is pulling these destructive, diabolical strings? How could they possible have regained such traction in a modern, educated land like ours. Money talks, boys.

I think part of the problem is a short, collective memory I have many times encountered among bright, young folks. When I tell such  people that, as a boy riding my bicycle across the Sunderland Bridge to a pickup baseball game, I wouldn’t have put my little toe in the Connecticut River. Why? Because back then, in the early Sixties, it was a toxic cesspool of raw human and industrial waste. Who of my vintage can forget the trips along Route 2 through Erving, when the color of the Millers River matched the toilet paper being produced that day. And that’s just the half of it. We couldn’t see the PCBs and heavy metals running untreated through metal pipes into the river. Contemporaneously, on a summer-long trip I took with my grandparents, venturing us as far west as Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, the Great Lakes were dead, so full of toxic chemicals that it was said a match could ignite the water into flames at certain hot spots. Don’t doubt it? It’s true.

That was the result of coast-to-coast industrial pollution that went unchecked before the likes of Carson went public and the “Flower Power” generation started advocating conservation and regulations aimed at ensuring that raw sewage and industrial waste could no longer flow untreated into our precious waters, that smokes stacks had to release clean emissions into the atmosphere. Yes, the captains of industry and Wall Street have been screaming bloody murder for decades, complaining loudly that federal regulations are killing our economy. While there’s no denying that regulations add to the bottom line, isn’t the cost justifiable as a way to keep out planet clean and healthy?

Not anymore. There’s a new sheriff in town. To the cheers of his throng, he’s opening our coastlines and National Parks to oil and mineral exploration. Industrialists and investors are licking their chops as a hungry, drooling fox stands sentry at the henhouse door. You have to wonder where it’ll all end, and when.

Hopefully soon. We’re swimming in dangerous waters.

*****

The 2017 bear harvest is in, and a total of 268 were harvested during the three-segment hunting season. This represents the second highest total, just below the 283 bears taken in 2016. A breakdown by season shows 151 taken during the Sept. 5 through 23 season, 26 taken during the November 6 through 25 season and a whopping 91 taken during the Nov. 27 through Dec. 9 shotgun deer season. Seaking of which, it looks like deer hunters are paying dividends in the bear-management game.