Since the bald eagle fiasco at last summer's Olympics, birds of prey have been hiding out in the hills. But along Wall Street in the last couple of weeks the vultures have been gathering.

The wires from the West Coast have been humming with tales of woe. California, land of sun, sea and silicon, is feeling the chill, and its most famous garage proprietor, Apple Computer, plans to close its production plants for a week to compensate for slow-moving stock. Systems, that is; its stock on Wall Street has been moving far too fast for comfort.

Then came the reports that Commodore might record a loss of $12-$15 million this quarter. Its shares responded by hitting a new all-time low.

There is even a note of uncertainty from Atari, where ebullience has been the order of the day since Jack Tramiel took over. Under normal conditions the news of alternative operating systems for its new ranges would be looked on as a sign Jack has all the angles covered - but with nerves frayed as they are at the moment it could indicate that TOS (Tramiel Operating System) isn't as complete as they'd like you to believe. One of the alternatives, incidentally, is called Jason - is that shorthand for Jack's son, or does it mean that Atari is about to perpetrate a Golden Fleece?

In the heavyweight division, the title fight matching Apple with IBM looks like going the distance, despite Apple's recent tendency to walk into haymakers. IBM, moving with its usual leaden footwork, has shocked everybody by pulling theplug on the PC Jr, while at the top of its range it still can't guarantee deliveries of the PC AT.

In a market where "integration" is the key word, IBM's PC line looks in serious danger of disintegrating, but IBM should be able to tack back together.

Apple's problems have more to do with credibility than technology. It has to persuade corporate America that it is a serious contender, and it has to sell Macintoshes to people with IBM engraved in their memories. Last week brought news of two kinds for Apple to digest: on the plus side, it started shipping the communications products that will turn the Mac into the MacNode, a genuine component in the communicating office - but the sour note came from Lotus, which admitted that Jazz was going to be late.

Jazz, sometimes called MacSymphony (or MacPhony for short), will not be available for the Macintosh for another month or two. This hurts Apple in more ways than one - US software houses seem to be holding off launching products for the Mac until they've had a look at Jazz.

Commodore and Atari by comparison are in the middleweight division (Marvin Hagler and Jack Tramiel, now there would be a match) and they have reached a stand-off. Atari's ST are due to reach the stores inside two months; Commodore's Amiga could be there by June 1985.

Until then they pace around the ropes, flexing what muscles they have left. Commodore's flab has become plain for all to see - it has to keep selling C64s without spoiling the market for the C128, launched at Las Vegas in January 1985. It has to take the Amiga from the working prototype stage to full production in about two months.

Finally, it has to allay fears that the LCD, also launched at Vegas, won't turn into another bald eagle. The LCD has been 'temporarily' put on ice, and that isn't an unusual way of testing its performance in adverse environments.

Wall Street has responded to all this in the patient, tolerant fashion that marks most of its high tech dealings. Commodore shares fell to a new low. At the same time it was learned that the company had $450 million's worth of inventory at the end of last year, and that its long-term debt was swollen to $143.3 million.

So the stage is set once more for Jack Tramiel, who could easily be a symbol of US enterprise - and not only because he's predatory and lacks hair. Jack isn't likely to fluff his entrance or, worse, die in the first scenes.

The real interest, though, is what sort of shape the US micro builders will be in later in the year as the Christmas rush approaches, and what sort of systems high income America is buying. Atari and Commodore are both moving towards systems that will insulate them against the marked seasonal ups and downs of the old traditional business - but the signs are that nobody will be suffering from another common bald eagle ailment, vertigo.