“Is that an eagle?” I asked, interrupting the bottle picker I was talking to in the alley on the south side of the 1300 block of West Broadway at a quarter past two on Friday afternoon (February 14).

As I asked the question, I directed my friend Eddie’s attention toward the soaring speck of a bird I had spotted high up in the blue sky.

At first glance I mistook it for a small aircraft—flying, as it was, with its long wings outstretched and unmoving. In the next instant, though, I saw that it was a large bird, with a dark body and an apparently white head. I guessed that it was using its outstretched wings to glide on a thermal updraft.

It clearly wasn’t anything run-of-the-mill, like a crow, or a pigeon or a seagull. And it didn’t look anything like the big raven I saw in the Fairview neighbourhood in 2015.

So I guessed it was an eagle. Or, more to the point, I hoped it was an eagle.

Spotting such a rara avis would be something of a feather in my cap, I think.

Others in my audience will surely know better but, for what it’s worth, my friend Eddie (his full street name is “Eddie Spaghetti”) wholeheartedly agreed with me and among binners he’s known to be quite eagle-eyed—at least when it comes to finding empties.