Hello Eagle Friends,
Today was an incredible day to be outdoors. The skies were clear and the temperature was 77 degrees on my second trip to the valley today. Em came with after school and we had a great time watching the eagles and discovering all the critters
who were coming out for their nocturnal rounds.
We stopped in town to get some cold water and a couple pickled eggs, the last two in the jar. We ran into our friend, Donny, the real Mayor, and I told him his eagles hatched their little one out so he and Judy need to go check that out sometime. He was happy to hear that.
Em and me left town and spent the entire rest of the afternoon at Nest 1. She found slugs and bigger slugs, and made mud food items decorating them with buds and leaves. I spent almost three hours on my knees trying to capture the first good shots of Daniels Charlie and his twin.
The lighting was gorgeous on the eagles and I managed to get some footage and several stills of the eaglets peeking through the sticks on their nest while mom brooded over them. Dancer came in with a small fish that looked like a trout or a rough fish for the eaglets. He dropped it off and sat on the nest for a couple minutes, and I think he was offering to give Daedee a break if she wanted one.
She didn't get up, so he flew off to a nearby tree and watched her feed the little ones.
Em and I hiked out and went to nest 6. It's nearly impossible to get a shot of the nest at an hour before sunset. It's like shooting into the sun and trying to focus on a flying bird at the same time. Still, I managed to get a handful of shots. It appears her eaglet was up on the nest by her, or it was her tail again, tricking me into thinking that white spot was the eaglet.
The goose in the shot above is the goose mound one female. Her little goslings are expected any day now. As we were leaving
I spotted a great blue heron silhouetted against the reflections of the ripples on the marsh.
The nest 5 eagles were both at the nest, one above, one on the nest and feeding their eaglet. I don't know if I'll ever get a shot of their eaglet before he sports his feathers soon.
At nest 3 and 4 both eagles were up on their nests feeding their young. It may seem like the eagles are always feeding their young, and the answer is yes, during this first couple weeks there are frequent feedings.
Below them were three great snowy egrets fishing in the marsh. The water where they were is deep however, and more than one of them dipped down trying to catch a fish, and landed in water up to his chest. This seemed to surprise him as he quickly jumped back up on shore.
I found a million and one mosquitos swarming the edge of the marsh. Of course, you have to expect that at a marsh and especially at sunset. Luckily however, they were almost all males. The males (as pictured above) have bushy antennae and they
are harmless. In other words, we have no knowledge of any males that bite and draw blood.
As we left Em kept spotting frogs leaping into the marsh and she wanted to go catch them, but I told her we'd have to do that another night. Then I spotted this female turkey (above), and she came down right in front of me watching me carefully as I lifted my camera to her face. She dipped her beak down into the ditch and drew up a beak full of water. Then she preened a moment before going back up the bluff.
Those turkeys are smarter than we give them credit for. There were two trucks on both sides of that bluff, and somehow she had slipped between the bushes and made it to the base of the bluff without getting shot, except by my camera. The leaves on the underbrush opened into small leaves throughout the valley providing a dense cover those turkeys will need to survive the 2008 turkey hunt.
As we the valley it was as if someone turned the light off and we drove home looking back at the darkness behind with the smell and sight of all the farm tractors spreading ahead. Yes, it is spring.
I'm looking forward to day 107.
See you on the journey--
Lisa
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