http://www.tampabay.com/video/?bcpid=28597115001&bctid=52364872001 video
CLEARWATER
Joan Brigham, Florida's indefatigable Eagle Woman, writes poetry about her favorite bird. She daydreams about eagles as she bakes her famous from-scratch brownies in her little kitchen. When eagles migrate from Florida in the spring she makes note of their departure on a clipboard. When they return in the fall she is waiting to greet them. Mrs. Brigham, 85, is the state's oldest volunteer in Florida Audubon's EagleWatch network. Most mornings she starts looking for eagles shortly after dawn. If there's an eagle lurking in the vicinity, she is lurking nearby. Her territory is west-central Florida's most urban county, Pinellas, where buildings outnumber eagle-friendly pine trees. In most of America, eagles are bashful wilderness critters that nervously avoid humans and their infernal internal combustion engines. In the urban Tampa Bay area, eagles often have no choice but to nest in backyard trees and in parking lots atop cell phone towers.
"I would rather find eagles in pine trees in the wilderness,'' Mrs. Brigham says crisply. "But I am happy to find eagles anywhere around here.''
Years ago, she seldom saw them anywhere in the United States. Eagles were headed for extinction because of a pesticide in the food chain, rampant development and illegal hunting. The chemical DDT, which weakened bird eggs, was banned in 1972. The Endangered Species Act passed the following year. By the next decade Mrs. Brigham was seeing Haliaeetus leucocephalus once again and feeling the call of the muse.
Eagle, Soaring High!
Master of the boundless sky,
Vision of freedom and majesty
Spirit of our lives and destiny
Keen-eyed symbol of a nation's dream,
Fly on forever, unfettered, supreme."I wrote that poem,'' says the Eagle Woman, "because it reflects my feelings exactly.''
