Everything about the Steller’s sea eagle is majestic: its colossal eight-foot wingspan makes bald eagles look quaint in comparison.Getty Images
Julia Zarankin is the author of Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder: A Memoir.
In late June, I did something bordering on unhinged and booked a last-minute flight from Toronto to St John’s, N.L., and travelled 2,600 kilometres to see a bird.
It wasn’t just any bird, but the formidable Steller’s sea eagle, normally a denizen of northern Japan, far eastern Russia and Korea that has, for reasons largely unknown, chosen to make its home in North America for the past five years. When I booked my ticket – knowing full well that there was no guarantee that I’d even see the eagle and that this could, potentially, turn into the most expensive non-sighting of my life – I recognized that I could no longer tell people that I bird in moderation. I had unintentionally entered my chasing era.
It’s been hard not to dream about the storied bird, since everything about the Steller’s sea eagle is majestic: one of the world’s largest birds of prey, the 20-pound eagle has a gargantuan yellow hooked bill, a dark back with contrasting gleaming white shoulders, tail and legs, and a colossal eight-foot wingspan that makes bald eagles look quaint in comparison. And now, after half a decade of wandering North America – from its initial arrival in Alaska during the first summer of the pandemic, to a sojourn in Texas, followed by a stint in the Gaspé peninsula, forays in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts and Maine – this particular individual seems to have found a home in Newfoundland. The eagle has been roaming the eastern part of the province – entirely on the wrong continent and more than 9,000 kilometres from home – since first alighting in 2022.
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I hadn’t seriously entertained chasing Stella, as it has been affectionately named by observers, in the past, mostly due to the bird’s preference for nearly-impossible-to-access locations, many of which required chartering a boat. When Stella was in Maine, within driving distance, the pandemic was still raging. This past June, however, everything changed: Stella showed up near the town of North River, N.L., an hour’s drive from St. John’s, and was easily viewable from the road. As soon as I heard that, I realized that the bird might never be in such an accessible location again, and since I have no immediate plans to see the sea eagle in its native range in Asia, there was only one thing left to do: call my BBF (best birding friend) and fly east as quickly as possible. If there’s one lesson to be had in chasing a rare bird, it’s “get there as quickly as humanly possible.”
I never thought of myself as a chaser. I first got into birding during a midlife crisis, while auditioning hobbies to find one that would exercise my patience. I was immediately attracted to the meditative aspect of birding and thought it would offer me a shortcut to feeling more present, without ever having to get into a yogic downward dog position. Initially, I turned to birding for the mindfulness, and that remains, to this day, the most important reason why I bird: in short, it makes me feel better. Slowing down and observing detail – learning to marvel at the plumage of a red-winged blackbird, for instance – gave me a new way of being in the world. My city came alive, I developed a new attachment to urban wildernesses, and I acted on the urgency to protect and conserve our wild spaces.
The 20-pound Steller's sea eagle has a yellow hooked bill and a dark back with contrasting gleaming white shoulders.Getty Images
Like any subculture, birding has its own share of curious lingo and behaviours. Birders often pish (Stop! It’s not at all what you think) by making psshhhh sound that mimics bird alarm calls in order to lure birds. (This has yet to work for me, but I’ve seen others excel at pishing.) They can talk about seeing FOYs (first sighting of the year), compare notes about optics (whose scopes are better, newer, brighter, lighter?), bemoan their nemesis birds (the birds one can’t quite manage to see no matter how hard one tries), commiserate about their dips (the failed sightings) and just-flown birds for hours, and fantasize about what vagrant (rare bird) might appear this season.
As I started going on bird outings, I discovered another side to birding: the hobby could also be intensely emotional and competitive – an adrenaline-fuelled state and an addictive pursuit to see as many species as possible. For some, it can be an extreme sport. Birding was far from the slow-paced activity I had imagined. And of course, the more birds you see, the more you want to see. And so, when a rare bird appears, a chase becomes next to inevitable. Writer and conservation activist Christian Cooper likened birding to the “pleasure of hunting, but without the bloodshed.”
Initially, I thought chasing might be a useless pursuit – even if everything goes spectacularly well, all that effort for an ephemeral sighting? Besides, I couldn’t reconcile hopping in my car at the mere mention of a rare bird with my desire for a more meditative hobby. But then I saw my first painted bunting in Ontario and the chase itself left me breathless: it took three trips from my home in Toronto to Oakville to finally lay eyes on the rainbow-patterned bird, and when I finally did it felt like I was in the presence of the holy grail.
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Chasing a rare bird usually results in a “lifer”– birdspeak for a person’s first sighting of a particular species, often accompanied by celebratory high-fives, gasps of wonder and the occasional expletive. Yet more importantly, it’s also an opportunity to embrace the beauty of the spontaneous and escape our mundane routines. Since we never know when a rare bird is going to appear, there is no planning for it. Nicholas Lund, advocacy and outreach manager for Maine Audubon, compares the euphoric pursuit “to someone who loves live music, except instead of buying tickets to a show in advance you just get a phone call like ‘Taylor Swift is playing in some random field three hours away – we have to go now.’”
The Steller’s sea eagle does indeed feel like a rock star. The further a bird strays from its native range, the more spectacular – and chase-worthy – its appearance becomes. To be honest, before 2020, I didn’t even know the Steller’s sea eagle existed (there are more than 10,000 species of birds in the world), and suddenly here it was, a sighting within possibility. It has already become a celebrity. Economists have analyzed its impact on tourism. A T-shirt company in Maine even designed a commemorative Steller’s sea eagle “North American Tour 2020-2023″ shirt, which I hope they’ll update to reflect current sightings.
Communities form around rare birds and the people desperate to see them. The “Steller’s Sea Eagle in Canada” Facebook group has more than 7,500 members who not only share photos, but also valuable information about the eagle’s whereabouts and GPS co-ordinates, encouragement, advice, and a genuine feeling of camaraderie among strangers coming together because they want their fellow birders to experience the magical sighting for themselves. As Mr. Lund says, “a vagrant bird like the Steller’s sea eagle can really shock people out of their normal lives, and remind them that incredible things are still possible in the natural world.”
I was one of several hundred people who made the trek to North River, N.L., this summer. When we arrived at the precise location, though, Stella was nowhere to be found, and after searching for several hours, I worried that our pursuit was for naught. After all, birds operate on their own schedule and don’t stay put forever. If only we’d left a day earlier, I lamented. But when planning our trip, I built the possibility of a few failed attempts into our itinerary, and ensured that we would always be within a two-hour drive of the eagle. We abandoned our search the first evening, but not before leaving our phone number with a woman named Brenda, who promised to call as soon as the bird reappeared.
A Steller's sea eagle photographed at the Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland.SANDRA MOSS/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Indeed, just as we finished eating dinner, our phone rang. The eagle was waiting for us! By the time we arrived, Stella was perched on a cliff overlooking the river, looking absolutely regal. I couldn’t take my eyes off the eagle’s massive bill and fierce posture, and we stayed until sunset. My BBF and I weren’t the only ones awestruck by the sea eagle’s magnificence; our new friend Brenda, who had engineered our sighting, was also beaming at the role she had played in our euphoria. There’s a communal joy to a successful chase.
The next morning, Stella regaled us by flying alongside a bald eagle, swooping down, and uttering its staccato barking call. We stood there, utterly mesmerized, both by the fact that we were seeing this bird, and also by the fact that somehow Stella was so far from home and was still safe. As Melissa Hafting, author of Dare to Bird and convener of the BC Rare Bird Alert, says: “For me, [chasing] is just another way of marvelling at their resilience and the far distances they fly.”
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A good chase feels like an incredible reward; the rare bird drops into your world for the briefest of moments and you, in turn, drop everything and treat its arrival with the reverence it deserves. Because you never know if and when it’ll happen again.
Though I sometimes wish I could live a life of constant chases, I know it would lose its magic. Instead, I relish the momentary exhilaration, adrenalin rush, spontaneity and embracing of the unknown that comes with an occasional chase. These ephemeral moments of sheer beauty and joy are a reminder that not everything needs to have a quantifiable purpose; it’s good to do things just for the pure, unhinged, delirious joy of it. It’s something I think everyone should experience.
And if birds aren’t your jam, then try chasing something else with the same vigour: a concert, an exhibit, an eclipse, or maybe even a Sasquatch.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that there are more than 10,000 species of birds in the world.