FROM THE ANNALS OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN:

Flourishing eagles feast on Maine's rare seabirds (CLARKE CANFIELD, 5/17/09, Associated Press)

Bald eagles, bouncing back after years of decline, are swaggering forth with an appetite for great cormorant chicks that threatens to wipe out that bird population in the United States.

The eagles, perhaps finding less fish to eat, are flying to Maine's remote rocky islands where they've been raiding the only known nesting colonies of great cormorants in the U.S. Snatching waddling chicks from the ground and driving adults from their nests, the eagles are causing the numbers of the glossy black birds to decline from more than 250 pairs to 80 pairs since 1992.

"They're like thugs. They're like gang members. They go to these offshore islands where all these seabirds are and the birds are easy picking," said Brad Allen, a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. "These young eagles are harassing the bejesus out of all the birds, and the great cormorants have been taking it on the chin." [...]

In the Midwest, eagles have targeted young blue herons, said Jody Millar, the national eagle recovery coordinator for Fish and Wildlife, based in Moline, Ill.

And in Alaska, researchers have documented a shift in bald eagles' diet from fish to marine birds that's linked to changes in the coastal ecosystem.

A growing number of killer whales caused a chain of ecological events that reduced the number of otters and amount of kelp providing habitat for fish, Robert Anthony reported in the journal Ecology. With fewer fish and baby otters to eat, eagles began raiding nests of other birds.

In Maine, eagles have been spotted eating loon chicks and have occasionally been known to carry off adult loons, said Sally Stockwell, director of conservation at Maine Audubon.

Off the coast, eagles have taken to eating all types of seabirds on rocky remote islands and ledges where, in years past, the seabirds didn't have any predators.