By Don Lyman
The Boston Globe, April 26, 2018
Photo: Jonathan Wiggs / Globe Staff
On a sunny but cold and windy morning, Jim Renault and Ken Stampfer stood on the Mystic Lakes Dam near the Medford Boat Club. With binoculars, they scanned the sky and trees along the shore.
Renault, a retired accountant from Arlington, pointed out a large brown blob in a tall tree on the edge of Lower Mystic Lake, about a quarter-mile from the dam. Through Renault’s high-powered camera lens, a majestic-looking bald eagle came into focus.
After about an hour, an eagle appeared overhead, calling and circling above the dam, its signature white head and tail and big, broad wings in stunning relief against the bright, blue sky.
“Everyone knows about the eagles,” said Renault. “Joggers and area residents come by and stop and ask, ‘Have you seen any eagles today?’ ”
The Mystic Lakes, which are bordered by Arlington, Medford, and Winchester, have become a popular hangout for bald eagles, and for bird-watchers who like to photograph them.
“My first sighting of an eagle was one of the highlights of my photographic life,” said Stampfer, an ophthalmologist from Belmont.
At a recent exhibit and contest at Hunt’s Photo and Video in Melrose devoted to photographs of Mystic Lakes bald eagles, one of Stampfer’s pictures took second place.
Arlington resident Ram Subramanian won first place in the contest. “I love taking photos of the area,” Subramanian said. “And now birds, too.”
Speaking at the exhibit, Paul Roberts of Medford, founder of Eastern Massachusetts Hawk Watch and an internationally recognized hawk expert, told the audience that while watching hawk migrations at Mount Wachusett in Central Massachusetts in 1978, he saw 13,000 hawks in a month, but only one eagle.
“That’s how rare seeing eagles was,” Roberts said. “If you told me 40 years ago there would be an exhibit of Mystic Lakes bald eagles . . . Just impossible.”
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