This photo won't win any prizes, but it shows a conjunction of two Somerville rarities: bald eagle at left, and common loon at right (along with both common and red-breasted merganser, also at right). I don't know if this is the same eagle that was here last year, and I haven't checked to see if it's still around, but it may well be. It came onto the ice (this was last weekend) to peck at a scrap of something loathsome.
At the eagle's approach, the gulls all freaked out and took to the air, but interestingly, the ducks seemed completely unfazed, and approached without fear:
(These are mostly mallards, with a few black ducks and mergansers thrown in.) I read in Wikipedia that certain populations of bald eagle prey heavily on mallards -- but our local ducks appear not to know, or not to care. Certainly to my eyes they looked vastly more appetizing than whatever the eagle was busy with.
