I'm surprised the cops didn't shoot it before taking it somewhere for help.

It was In Laaka Swego, Kevin - not a PPD district. But the main point is missing here: it's kind of cool that eagles are sparring over territory. That's a big comeback for these carrion-eaters.

We really need to build more roads, and quit dinking around with hugely expensive trains.

More roads means more road-kill, and that's good for the eagles, and good for the environment. If we had more roads, then the eagles wouldn't need to fight so much for territory, as there would be plenty of food to go around. They could nest in the empty South Waterfront condo towers....

MAX seems to be doing o.k. in the kill department.

Two weeks ago, four balds -- two juveniles and two adults -- soared above a small park just south of Powell, a few blocks west of 39th Ave. No collisions or squabbles. It appeared to be a family outing.

One possibility regarding the population increase locally: the rapid and extensive conversion of traditional raptor turf east of the Cascades to wind turbine farms, especially along the Columbia, has encouraged them to migrate west. I have no data to support this speculation, but there is anecdotal evidence.

Mr Menefree - SURELY you meant to say Avenida Cesar Chavez, NOT the racist "39th Ave." Your transgression will be referred to the City Committee on Un-Aquarian Activities and the Human Rights Commission. In the meantime, fifteen minutes of Self-Criticism are in order. (We assume any eagle seen on that blessed Avenue was eating a snake.)

Good thing the eagle had the good sense to squabble over territory in LKO. The PPD would have tasered it at the very least!

Morbius, César Chávez, who was a modest man of prodigious determination on behalf of all who labor in the fields of this American nation, has been in no way honored by yet another travesty foisted upon the people of Portland. You know this, I know this, and Mr Chávez's family knows this as well.

The four eagles never dipped near 39th: they soared high above the carnage and appallingly aggressive misbehavior associated with that thoroughfare.

maybe all the new cell towers are distorting their biological compass?

Wind farms? Cell towers? Why look to conspiracy theories when there's been a concerted effort to encourage the bald eagle population in the Portland area for at least a couple of decades? There's been a colony of bald eagles on (what's left of) Ross Island for a long time, and an increase in the local population would be bound to lead to some territorial disputes. With the mild winter evidenced in places like Vancouver, we may even be seeing some early northward migration through the area from winter roosts in California.

darrelplant, sorry if I instigated a suggestion of a "conspiracy theory" regarding raptors and wind farms. There is not much data available on this relationship. The O provided this very brief AP rip last year:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/05/first_golden_eagle_killed_by_a.html

The Columbian offered a more detailed report. Among the comments appended to the O piece you might discover this excerpt:

Posted by menefree
June 08, 2009, 4:46PM
windnow, you might find this comment to the 18May Columbian's more extensive coverage of this eagle death-by-turbine edifying:

by Dawn Stover : 5/19/09 6:34pm
Further clarification: Raptor deaths at the Big Horn project have been at least an order of magnitude greater than projected, according to both Smallwood and the developer's own wildlife consultants. The developer, Iberdrola, predicted that Big Horn would kill 3-4 raptors annually, but the company's consultants estimate that the actual death toll is 31 raptors annually, based on a monitoring study done after the project was constructed. Using a scientific model that corrects for some of the biases in the consultants' study, Smallwood estimates that Big Horn's toll is 49 raptors annually. Big Horn was supposedly built in an area of the county with the lowest density of raptors.

Big Horn was the first major wind project constructed in Klickitat county, and was more thoroughly monitored during its first year of operations than most wind projects in the nation. Before Big Horn was built, Klickitat County did an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) predicting that four wind projects, with a total generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, would be constructed in the county over a 20-year period. The EIS forecast that those projects would kill a total of 33 raptors per year. Taking the actual results from Big Horn into account, Smallwood now predicts 243 raptor deaths annually. But that is just for four projects, and Klickitat County has already permitted a dozen or so projects, with more on the way. Multiply the impacts over all these projects and we are looking at hundreds or even thousands of raptor deaths in Klickitat County alone. Every year. And that's just raptors. The numbers for other birds are much higher.

It may be simply that the bald eagle is a success story and has returned to its traditional territory after recovery from the DDT catastrophe. Consider, for example, this LATimes piece on live balds near their symbolic representations in DC:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/04/nation/na-eagles4

Victoria BC is known for its urban eagles. Perhaps Portland should be? Better to be remembered for voracious carrion consumers than rapacious and duplicitous elected city turkeys?

Perhaps our most pressing question regarding bald eagles is whether one of them is named Little Stephen Colbert?

Can somebody quantify "an order of magnitude?" I didn't go that high in math.

Gardiner, I don't have any doubt about the probability that wind farms are going to kill birds, I just don't think they're the likely reason for an upswing in bald eagle sightings in the Portland area.

As a member of the "no such thing as a free lunch" club, I actually think that there could very well be some other unintended consequences of subtracting large (by human scale) amounts of energy from the natural processes of the atmosphere. That's a lot of damn big butterflies to have an effect, if you know what I mean.