`Pow! It Knocked Me Over' -- Eagle Attacks Man In Alaska -- Amateur Photographer Gashed In Rare Incident On Kodiak Beach

The first warning, a sudden glimpse of a shadow, came too late.

"It was instantaneous. About the same time I saw the shadow, I turned a little bit and - Pow! - it knocked me over."

Ron Beasley's head was gouged by the talons of a bald eagle last Saturday in a rare, if not unique, instance of an eagle attacking a human. The amateur photographer was rushed from a remote beach on Alaska's Kodiak Island to a hospital where his gashes were closed with seven stitches.

Biologists believe the bald eagle and its mate - which pursued Beasley to his pickup a half mile from the initial attack - were defending their nest. There were no eyewitnesses.

Beasley, who was visiting relatives in Federal Way yesterday, recalled the incident that has Alaskans' tongues wagging this week.

The 35-year-old Kodiak building contractor had gone to Fossil Beach to walk in the wildflowers and photograph eagles after picnicking with friends at a nearby ranch.

After he was knocked to the ground by the unexpected attack of one eagle, the bird's mate dive-bombed him from another direction. Beasley shook his fist and shouted as the bird passed over him. "It was close enough that I could feel the wind draft from him," he said.

Dazed and bleeding heavily, he held one hand on his head and waved the other in the air defensively as he struggled toward the dirt road in search of help.

The eagles followed him all the way, swooping over him repeatedly. "They were working as a team. Mom and dad were definitely working together," he said.

Tracy Pringle and a friend who had spent the day picnicking and searching for fossils on the beach were about to leave for Kodiak when Beasley reached the road.

"I just looked up and saw this man staggering across the front of my truck and he was covered in blood," Pringle said.

Pringle used gauzes and bandages to slow the bleeding, then drove him 15 miles to the nearest telephone where he called paramedics. Beasley was treated at Kodiak Island Hospital for puncture wounds, gashes and 5-inch-long scrapes on the top of his head.

Corlene Hogg, director of medical records at the hospital, said Beasley's injuries were consistent with an eagle attack.

While in the emergency room, Beasley met another wildlife victim: fisherman David Ward, who was airlifted to the hospital after being slapped in the chest by the tail of a killer whale that he was trying to free from a fishing net.

Wildlife biologists said they knew of no other case in which a human had been injured by an eagle.

"Most of the time eagles are pretty shy of people," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jim Michaels.

"We have a lot of horror stories of eagles abandoning sites because of disturbance but not of their going out of their way to attack people."

Eagles often defend their nests, however, by screaming and swooping down at humans or other would-be attackers. Beasley said he was on a hillside 200 to 250 feet from an eagle's nest on a cliff when he was attacked.

"I try to give them plenty of room because I know they're protective just like any parent would be," said Beasley, father of two boys.

But Dennis Zwiefenhofer, a biologist at Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, said it was unlikely that an eagle would attack a person that far from a nest.

He said he has gone to more than 200 eagle nests to mark hatchlings for research and has never been physically attacked.

Zwiefenhofer said there were unconfirmed reports that another man who had been attacked by an eagle on Kodiak Island when he climbed a tree next to a nest to take pictures about 10 years ago.

It is not known if the eagle made physical contact in the earlier case.

The most frightening aspect of Beasley's encounter with the eagles, he said, was the possibility that he would be stranded at the beach unable to help himself. His injuries proved not to be life-threatening, but he didn't know it at the time.

"If I had any advice," he reflected, "it would be, `don't go out by yourself.' I won't go out by myself again."