Bald eagle on the Hudson at Croton Point
— — the bird that came back to a river that came back.
Not only on a wall.
“Croton Point pushes out into the wide stretch of the Hudson at Haverstraw Bay, and in January and February bald eagles gather along the ice edge there to fish. Most are wintering birds down from the St. Lawrence and the Adirondacks; a few are the resident pair that nest somewhere along the river now. Forty years ago there were almost none on the Hudson at all. The bird and the river came back together. People watch from the bluff and keep their voices low. from the studio
Bald eagle on the Hudson at Croton Point, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Croton Point is a 508-acre peninsula reaching west into the Hudson River from the village of Croton-on-Hudson in Westchester County, about thirty-five miles north of Manhattan. The park sits at the mouth of the Croton River where it enters Haverstraw Bay, the widest stretch of the lower Hudson at roughly 3.5 miles across. Westchester County operates the park, which includes a campground, a beach, and grassy meadows on a capped former landfill, with views west to Hook Mountain and the Palisades.
Bald eagle counts on the lower Hudson peak in late January and early February, when northern birds concentrate at the ice edge to fish. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has tracked wintering eagles on the river since the 1980s, when only a handful remained statewide after DDT collapse; the breeding population in New York is now well over four hundred pairs. Croton Point and the nearby Verplanck shoreline are the two most reliable lower-river viewpoints. Most birds leave by mid-March.
Haverstraw Bay is an estuarine bay of the Hudson where the river is tidal, brackish, and shallow enough to freeze in cold winters. Striped bass, herring, and white perch use the bay as a nursery, and the eagles work the open leads in the ice for stunned fish and waterfowl. The Croton River enters the bay just north of the point, draining the Croton Reservoir system that has supplied New York City drinking water since 1842. The mix of freshwater inflow and tidal salt keeps the fishery rich.