Here are some bald eagle facts. They have a wing span of up to seven feet. They are almost four feet tall. Their talons and beaks are intense and rather scary to look at. When they perch in a tree and look at you, it's intimidating, especially knowing that they can see the pores in your skin, their eyesight is that good. They don't look like anything else. If you see a bird that big, with a white head, it's the only bird that it can be. The noises of other birds change when they are around. First it gets very quiet, and then it gets very strident. It's not the usual bird chatter that you hear; there truly is a sense of urgency in it.

I think the single most fascinating fact that I learned this weekend was how much the birds weigh. We had a bird expert among us who knew but before he told us, we all guessed. The highest guess was forty five pounds. It turns out that a full grown eagle, with a seven foot wing span, sitting almost four feet tall weighs about eight to fourteen pounds. Probably some of you knew that even a bird that large would weight very little, given the whole flying thing. Hollow bones, lots of feathers and all. I was astounded that a bird so majestic, so powerful, so intimidating would weigh so little. When we had the rare pleasure of seeing one of the younger birds actually snatch a fish out of the water and then have the other young bird grab it away, you could feel the speed, power, determination and utter strength of this bird.

So of course it made me think about you. About infertility. About power, strength and possibility in something that weighs so little. About our eggs, our embryos, our hopes. And for those of us who "only" have one or two follicles or "only" retrieve one or two eggs, or "only" have one or two embryos fertilize, or "only" have one or two embryos that mature to day five. While I was thinking about this I recalled the conversation during the afternoon of how our bald eagle population went into a serious, dangerous decline for a long time, partly due to the use of DDT which made their eggs so fragile that babies were much less frequently hatched. When the numbers of eagles were declining, each one was important to the continuation of the species. That is still true. They had help, our help, we banned DDT, we passed laws that made it illegal to disturb their nesting area. We helped.

Doesn't each of us deserve the same help?

I came home and looked up some information about bald eagles and found out that they are one of the few species who have struggled and succeeded in being upgraded from the endangered to the threatened list. There are an estimated 70,000 bald eagles in the world.

 I had the pleasure of watching three of them this weekend.