By NANCY JANE KERN
THIS WEEK we celebrate Valentine’s Day which gets its name from several Christian men named Valentine who were martyred by the Romans about 250 AD, and through several legends. Two of the martyrs were canonized to become Saint Valentines. One was arrested for marrying Roman soldiers who were forbidden to marry, and for aiding early Christians. He cured the blind daughter of his judge, and before he was executed wrote her a letter signed “Your Valentine.”
Valentine’s Day first became associated with romantic love in the 14th century, at the time of Geoffrey Chaucer. Valentine cards and gifts became popular on February 14th during the 17th and 18th centuries until the present. Zdravko was the name of Saint Valentine in Slovenia, and he was considered one of the saints of spring. Plants began to grow on his day and the birds were supposed to propose and marry.
In our area, a pair of lovebirds, two adult bald eagles, perched in a tree above the Hudson River and courted. At first, they sat apart until the one on the left moved over to the other eagle and sat close. At that point, they looked at each other and began chirping and “talking” in their eagle language. It always surprises me that such a large and fierce-looking bird has a high-pitched squeaky voice. In their way, affection was being given.
In mid-January, the Hudson River was frozen, and only the main channel was broken open by the icebreakers. About that time there were a few eagles spotted inland on deer carcasses and along open streams where the eagles were finding their usual diet of fish. Bald eagles are sometimes referred to as our fish eagles. These birds pair up now and may return to the previous year’s nest site in a large sturdy tree. The nest is repaired or built with large sticks that have been found or broken off a tree, it is lined with smaller branches, then softer materials like cornstalks or mosses are added. The final liner can be downy feathers from the parents. One to three eggs are laid, and incubation is about 35 days. The female spends most of the time in the nest, but the male shares this duty. After the eggs have hatched, both parents hunt and feed them. It may take several months before they leave the nest, and the adults often continue to feed them for weeks until they learn to fish or find carrion. It takes about five years to go from a dark brown colored juvenile to adulthood with a white head and tail. My observations of these adult eagles go back to the early 1980s after young eaglets were brought down from Alaska to replace our native birds lost to DDT poisoning. I had observed them in Florida and Alaska, and to see them here in our county was a thrill beyond description. Now they are so common that people take them for granted. It was again a thrill to see these huge “lovebirds.” our National Symbol and bird, and so fitting a symbol of Saint Valentine’s Day.
