Hello Eagle Friends,
Today began with something I have never seen. Two sun dogs at sunrise, (those are like cresent-shaped rainbows off on each side of the sun and I've only seen them on -20 or more below zero days), but today they were extendeding onto the horizon and they looked like rainbow-colored shadows stretching across the field of grasses rising up with the sun.
The temperature at 7:50 AM was -34 below zero with the wind chill, but it warmed up some as the morning went on.
I hiked the river this morning hoping to get another glimse of the golden eagle, but he was no where to be found. I must have shot a hundred images of frost on fox tails, on seed pods,
branches, tree limbs, and grasses. Then I shot the mist rising from the half-frozen river edged with ice, and surrounded by frost-covered plants.
As the sun ascended spreading light into the tree and plant shadows, I watched thousands of tiny snowflakes falling like self-contained, mini snow storms.
Later on I found the three canada geese back from their travels and now feeding with the trumpeter swans on the ever-shrinking pond edges that are freezing up more each day in these below zero temperatures.
As I traveled on, I found the two red tail hawks, the ones from the other day, the one that I thought was a juvenile, and the deep red hawk who is an adult. They sat opposite sides of a tall tree, but gave the appearance that they were hunting together.
I pulled over and hiked up a bluff, and the adult flew the quarter mile to the area I was and screamed out. His call was ear-piercing and I looked up into the canopy of bare branches, but I never saw him. I looked back the quarter mile and could see the juvenile still sitting in the tree.
As I climbed the bluff I followed a tapping sound to the creator who turned out to be a hairy woodpecker breaking open a seed. I filmed him, and then a nuthatch entered the scene, so I filmed him too. Then I hiked back down and took out and put on another coat for warmth.
After that I found some good sized buck tracks and followed those up another bluff. I didn't get too far because it was almost 1 PM and had to leave to get back to Rochester.
All five of the eagle nests were empty today. At the tail end of my project on my drive out I pulled over to watch a dozen cardinals and a red-bellied woodpecker feeding on the standing
corn cobs. I watched this clever woodpecker fly over take one kernel of corn, and then he flew back and hammered the kernel in between a branch and a tree trunk. He had at least five or six kernels packed into his private corn seed cache, safe from squirrels, but I guess he wasn't worried about the chickadees.
I see woodpeckers stashing food all the time in tree crevices, in rows of the bark on a tree.
Next, I see the chickadees finding it.
On my drive out I found one eagle, who looked back at me. I was thankful this day
ended with an eagle to think about on my drive home.
I'm looking forward to Day 17.
See you on the journey--
Lisa
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