You’ve probably seen a bald eagle in a film or TV show, where the bird soars gracefully and swoops with might to catch its prey. As it flies, it makes a grand, airy, screeching sound. But the truth is, that eagle has been dubbed over.
That classic screech is actually the sound of another raptor: the red-tailed hawk. It sounds like this.
America’s national bird actually makes a series of whistles and chirps, more like this.
“Like, it's this huge bird. It should probably make an amazing screaming noise that just, you know, sends chills down your spine,” said Anna Morris, director of wildlife ambassador programs at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. “In reality, it sounds kind of like a seagull with laryngitis.”
Morris says the dubbing is “rampant” in TV and movies. “It just pulls me right out of my suspension of disbelief,” she said.
One famous example is the Colbert Report intro sequence, where a bald eagle flies up at the end and makes a red-tailed hawk vocalization. Even “Desert Eagle” on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album features the sound of the wrong bird right at the top.
Though the sounds bald eagles make differ from how pop culture portrays them, their vocalizations help them to communicate in different scenarios.
What bald eagle vocalizations might mean
Bald eagles can be found across most of North America, typically near bodies of open water for fishing.
“Bald eagles’ population has actually been doing very, very well in the past couple of decades,” said Morris. The introduction of the Endangered Species Act in 1978 and efforts by conservationists to ban the pesticide DDT are credited with helping their population rebound.
On a June day at Horizon Wings, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Ashford, Connecticut, Mary-Beth Kaeser, the founder of the nonprofit, was greeted by Atka, a male bald eagle, as she walked by his enclosure.
“It doesn't match the image of our nation's symbol when one chirps at you like that,” she told the bird as he vocalized behind her.
Atka has been with Kaesar since 2011, when he was a year old, after he was found with an injured wing. His gull-like chirps can communicate his awareness of Kaesar’s presence. “He's letting me know that he knows I'm here,” she said.
Kaesar said bald eagles don’t have a huge repertoire of vocalizations. But like most birds, they have “different calls for mating, for territory, for announcing their arrival, for hunger.”
She said young bald eagles make “sort of a whiny sound” to let their parents know they're hungry.
Morris, of the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, said sometimes adult females will even mimic this cry.
“In many raptor species, this exact vocalization is co-opted by the female early on in the breeding season to beg for food from her partner,” said Morris. “She kind of pretends to be a juvenile so that she can gauge what his providing abilities are going to be like.”
Though Hollywood may not consider their vocalizations to be quite as regal as that of the red-tailed hawk, there are a lot of other reasons bald eagles have earned their reputation as a majestic American bird.
Morris says the birds only weigh about six to ten pounds, but are physically intimidating with a wingspan of six feet. They’re also incredible hunters with talons that act as knives.
“Eagles will grab a five-pound fish right out of the water and carry it up to a tree and take it apart,” said Morris.
Bald eagles also have some real family values.
“They're very devoted to their mate and their family,” she said. “The young bald eagle will often stick around for like a full year with its parents after it flies from the nest, which is pretty unusual in the raptor world.”