Do eagles eat fish in winter, or only when there’s open water?
A. Eagles eat fish all year round, and can and do fly long distances to find open water for fishing. In the metro area, eagles bunch up at open areas on rivers near power plants. Eagles occasionally snatch injured ducks and they’ll also scavenge on road-killed deer. Q. I just saw the strangest thing on my backyard maple tree—the bark seemed to be moving! When I looked more closely it turned out to be a bark-like bird, but I don’t know what kind. A. That’s an excellent description of the brown creeper, which does look like a piece of bark as it spirals upward around a tree trunk in search of insects. The creeper is perfectly camouflaged, with its brown back over an all-white belly. Creepers invariably move upward and their cousins, the white-breasted nuthatches, move downward on tree trunks. Each may find hidden insects that the other’s feeding strategy has overlooked. Val Cunningham, who writes about birds for many publications, is also a field trip leader for St. Paul Audubon and cond
