The bald eagle has been the emblem of the United States since 1782. Prior to that, the bald eagle was a revered spiritual symbol of the Native Americans, according to All About Birds.
Bald eagles, named for their gleaming white-feathered heads, were once a rare sight.
They were once endangered because of hunting, loss of habitat, and pesticides. However, the bald eagle population is now thriving thanks to protective laws.
Now you can spot bald eagles high in the sky, flying low or perched in treetops near lakes, reservoirs, rivers, marshes, and coasts.
They’ll often be spotted scavenging for a meal, fighting other birds for their meals, or eating carrion or garbage.
It is, however, rare to see multiple bald eagles at one.
That is unless you’re at a wildlife refuge or in Alaska or the Pacific Northwest. One place where bald eagles love to congregate is Dutch Harbor, Alaska. This place is known to be crawling with bald eagles.
According to Wired, Dutch Harbor is a fishing village of about 4,700 people in the Aleutian Islands. It is also home to more than 500 eagles.
The Dutch Harbor bald eagles are famous for swooping on the docks, picking through trash, and snatching grocery bags from humans.
This is why they are known as “Dutch Harbor pigeons.”
“You think of them as these iconic models of what people like to think of America as, but it’s all about perception,” Corey Arnold, author of Aleutian Dreams, told Wired. “Photographing them in these compromising situations, like in garbage cans—it’s ironic.”
Since Dutch Harbor catches more fish than any other port town in the country, it attracts lots of eagles who like to help themselves to that fish.
“When humans provide some food, they’re subsidized predators,” Falk Huettman, associate professor of wildlife ecology at University of Alaska Fairbanks, said. “We do it with overfishing, dumps, and farms. Once you have an industry, it gets these concentrations.”
One fisherman, who goes by the name jessie peck on YouTube, captured the magnificence of a bald eagle posse.
It’s really something else to see so many of these majestic creatures in one place at the same time.
He throws some fish into the air and a group of about 10 them come swarming. Then the camera pans to reveal that there’s actually about 20 of them on the boat.
“Just another day in Alaska,” he writes in the video’s caption.
Watch this incredible sight in the video below.
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