Don't worry – that's not a massive, forest-stomping eagle coming to get an equally giant lark.
It is, however, a very disappointed juvenile bald eagle, realizing that the tasty bird he's picturing as a late breakfast is, instead, a decoy.
The backstory: Metro has been working to turn the former St. Johns Landfill into a native prairie. According to Metro natural resource scientist Elaine Stewart, part of that work is to lure the streaked horned lark to the prairie.
The lark, Stewart said, is soon to be listed under the endangered species act, and is found nearby in the Rivergate Industrial District.
How does one lure larks? Well, with decoys.
Metro technician Therese Mitchell noticed that something has been after the decoys, but didn’t know what, Stewart said in an email.
"The scratches didn’t look like typical coyote bite marks, so Therese got the idea to set up a wildlife camera by a decoy and see what it photographed," Stewart said. "The attached image is just about the last critter we ever would have expected."
The juvenile eagle, thinking it had easy pickins' on the prairie, instead is just getting an important lesson we all know – if it looks too good to be true…
"Juvenile predators are – you know they have to try different things out, that's how they learn," Stewart said.
In this case? "When it's made out of wood and doesn't have the feathers," it's not a meal.