By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“The Bald Eagle: The Improbably Journey of America’s Bird” by Jack E. Davis, c.2022, Liveright, $29.95, 418 pages

Imagine your house from up higher.

From 5,000 feet, it would look like a small brick or scrap wood. Your vehicle, like a toy car. Trees, like stalks of broccoli and you, like a tiny scuttling insect running about. Imagine the breeze at 5,000 feet, a patchwork land beneath the clouds, and the awesome expansiveness of it all. Then let “The Bald Eagle” by Jack E. Davis take you higher.

America does not have a “national bird.”

We have a national mammal and a national tree but, officially speaking, there is no national bird because nothing’s been passed into law or proclamation. But that’s not the only indignity that a dignified bird like the Bald Eagle has endured...

Legend has it that Benjamin Franklin wanted a turkey to be a national symbol but that’s likely a myth, says Davis. Ben was probably joking, although it’s true that he wasn’t too impressed with the eagle. In the end, that’s okay – others were, eventually, almost by accident.

It’s hard to believe that having the eagle on our nation’s seal was ever even a question: before the Colonists came to North America, the eagle was a powerful, important symbol in Native American culture, and many of the bird’s seven thousand plumes were used in “a language of feathers” and other rituals. As for those Colonists, the eagle’s majesty and its hunting prowess were both widely admired. Still, there was controversy, and our country was independent for years before the seal design was approved and with it, the eagle-as-symbol.

Eagle-watchers know that love wasn’t always given to the bird, however. Not once, but twice in American history, the eagle was almost driven to extinction; in fact, there was a time when they was seen as brutes and thieves to be destroyed. Live eagles were “inducted into service” during wartime. Eagles were stolen, stuffed and studied; honored, revered, and despised, all within the last two hundred years. And today – finally – the eagle is protected.

Back in 1932, the debut of the quarter coin featuring George Washington caused a kerfuffle: did the back of the coin feature a golden eagle or a bald eagle? That story, and the differentiation, are just a small part of what’s inside “The Bald Eagle.”

Indeed, author Jack E. Davis has a little something for every bald eagle watcher, from taxonomy to etymology, cultural ideals to scientific facts to shocking tales from a time when eagles were prey of the most dangerous predator of all. Those latter pages are hard ones to read – as are the tales of near-extinction – but Davis doesn’t let readers turn away from the harshest realities of history; to balance them, you’ll be glad for the tiny pebbles of distracting minutiae and trivia that are scattered about.

This is the kind of book you’ll want to read, and then place on your shelf for later consultation. It’s shareable, discussable, and very, very fascinating. If you keep a To-Be-Read list, you’ll want to put “The Bald Eagle” a little higher on it.