Bald Eagle!

So today I chanced to look out the bathroom window and I see four birds alighting on one of the afore-mentioned "mountains" about thirty feet out, the bumpy edge where the frozen-over shallows meet the bay.  Four dark birds...crows, no doubt...but wait, one of them is quite a bit larger than the others.  And as they are landing, I see he has a white tail.  Hello, no crow has a white tail!

I run to get the binoculars and look through the window breathlessly, and there he is: a bald eagle! He's got something in his talons.  I run to get the camera and try to focus it through the window.  Ack, it's on movie setting!  Change to scenery, take a picture, back to the binoculars.  Three crows waiting on the sidelines and one big eagle, eating something.

Suddenly he spreads his wings and flies away.  I can see better now what he's got in his talons:  the partially-eaten remains of a fish.  He flies away gracefully down the coast.  I run to the other part of the house and try to find him again with the binoculars, but he is gone.

Okay, so now I want to check the books.  Was it really a bald eagle?  His head was not pristinely white like in the picture...he looked like he was dirty.  Well heck, he'd been fishing.  Did he have a yellow beak?  I can't remember.  I look at other hawk-like birds.  Could it have been an osprey?  They eat fish! But his head was white...dirty white, but not with that black mark.  Plus, according to Sibley, ospreys are around here in the summer, not the winter.  Confirmed by Birds of Michigan.  Plus, they don't have a white tail.

Time to upload the picture.  Perhaps this will end the debate!  Unfortunately, we must return to an earlier theme of this blog:  I need a better camera.  (No offense, trusty Lumix.)  Here it is, for what it's worth:

I wish I could zoom in further, but the resolution just disintegrates.

Diagnosis, anyone?