Day 186, Saturday, 7/12/08, Year Four Dancer & Daedee: Snow Falling on Eagles

Hello Eagle Friends,

It was a gorgeous, sunny day in the valley with temperatures in the high 80s.

I found no activity on nest 7.

The twins were crying out so loud when I got out of my truck at my hike-in access point at nest 1, I thought I had missed a feeding. I barely noticed the rustling in the grasses beside me as a critter leap out of my view.

From the tracking around the puddle I thought I could sit there and write an entire book on who had visited since last night. There were rose-breasted grosbeak tracks, turkey, raccoon, pheasant, and two deer and what would a shallow puddle be without a couple whirly bugs?

As I shoved through the thick grasses, cutting me like sheets of paper, I grumbled my way to my grass coated path, still trying to recreate what took 4 years to keep clean.

I was happy to see my field camera had my favorite word on the LCD, FULL. It wasn't until tonight while downloading the images that full without an SD card only equaled
about 8 shots, three that were me--just to track the dates.

The camera's are notorious for batteries dying after a day or two, and the date stamp seems to always be off, so I don't bother resetting that every time I hang a camera either. I had forgotten how few images the cameras store without the SD cards.

The shots were, like I expected, waving grasses with a couple that I guess one could imagine were space aliens, or a big foot waving at the camera. Better luck next time I guess.

I was just thankful to see Daniels and D'ODEE. Daniels is 13 weeks old now, and Daniels will be 13 weeks old tomorrow. I don't know how these last few months passed me by so quickly, but I count every day I have with them a blessing.

I'm not finding the other eaglets like I have these two. Even when not on the nest, I'm finding them. I hope that continues, but it could change any day.

I sat with the twins until the sun went down and I watched Daniels take several eagle naps while D'ODEE watched for mom or dad and the food. Then I hiked out, taking my
field camera with me.

The anticipation of what shots I had weighed more than the camera bag itself.

There was no activity at nest 2.

I moved onto nest 6 and found the mother deer with her twin fawns. I have come to appreciate this little deer family, and I look forward to seeing them out in the meadow. I knew I wasn't going to get both video and stills just the way mom was cautiously watching told me I had about 12 seconds.

I filmed her with her neck up and eyes looking through me, a shoulder high rusty colored fawn on each side standing among the tiger lilies with the sun behind them. It was a sight that I'm glad I video taped.

I only got about ten seconds of video and she turned and called her twins to follow and in another few seconds they were all running through ten foot grasses into the woods.

Nest 6 was empty. I hoped one or both eaglets would have returned but they have some great places to hunt and fish so it may be a while before I see them again.

I was filming at nest 5 when one of the eaglets flew in and landed on the short perch above the nest. I wish I could find of them just to know they were OK.

There was no activity at nest 3 or 4.

I stopped and photographed a buck and a yearling doe out in a field. He was guarding her like bee to hive. Every so often he would bend down and butt heads with her, and she would roll her head all around his neck and lick his face.

They looked like a couple deer in love, and I've never seen two deer so fond of each other. I opted for video for most of this coverage, and I'm glad I did. I doubt you'll find more expressive, endearing coverage than what I shot.

Then three older doe's came into the clearing. The buck put his head down to one of them and they passed. They were the ones that snitched on me. I got a few shots, but it was disappointing that they had their senses turned up and all at once two shot past the buck as he and his doe looked my direction.

A moment later and all hooves were flying through the air.

That left me with the bats, dozens of bats diving and rising in the air eating up all those back-biting mosquitoes.

It was a great day in the valley.

I'm looking forward to day 187.

See you on the journey--

Lisa