Hello Eagle Friends,
As I type the lightening is flashing through my curtains, the thunder is bellowing out one thundering crack after another, and the rain is pelting the windows. There is nothing like a good spring thunderstorm to clear the air of humidity and wash the land.
Em wanted to come with me again to do the eagle project. I don't think we were ten feet into the field when the rain started.
I got her settled under the overhanging branches, and draped a poncho over the branch to keep her dry. Dancer had just brought in a fish and left it for the twins.
Dancer flew off leaving the twins to figure out for themselves how to feed on their own. I didn't even have to look at a calendar
to know they were 6 weeks. His leaving them with their fish "puzzle" was like handing your child one of those interlocking puzzles and telling them to get their treat by untwisting the pieces where they'll find their treat inside.
Daniels Charlie had control of the fish, a brook trout large enough to make any trout fisherman change over from his fishing flies to eagle talons. Daniels Charlie puffed out his feathers trying to look larger than he was and he spread his wings out slightly to knock back D'ODEE who was endlessly trying to grab the fish.
Still the rain came down and I found myself pushing 1/20th of a second to get the proper exposure at 800 IS0, and then without warning I lost another stop of light and I was shooting at 1600 ISO. When the light was almost as dim as dusk that is when D'ODEE Brian Michael attacked Daniels Charlie.
He came in over Daniels right shoulder and shoved him with his left wing pushing him off balance. In one swift, well planned move he rose up out the nest with a beheaded brook trout dangling from his iron bars beak. Daniels Charlie was trying with all his might to take it back and the two slapped their beaks together.
I've seen it three years in a row now. The youngest eaglet has to fight harder for his meals, and by the time he is 6 to 7 weeks old he is usually the one that dominates the food. I don't know why that is that way other then the older eaglet never had to learn to fight for his food to begin with. He always had it a little easier because he was bigger. Maybe that is a lesson for us all.
We moved on to nest 2 and found 53 day old Terry Gail up on the nest as soaked to the skin as D'ODEE and Daniels Charlie. There is a soulfulness I see in the solo eaglets, a calmness, a look of expectancy to meet the sky means to meet the other eagles. How lonely it must be at their "top."
At nest 6 Linda or Dick was flying overhead, and the twins were walking around the nest. The rain was only sprinkling now and barely denting the marsh surface. Up ahead about four pair of geese were in the deep grasses feeding. I never tire of watching them. Their expressions are wild but with a gentle soulful prayer in their brown eyes.
Their goslings are an endless source of comic relief. Even with their first month complete, they trip and stumble over their webbed feet, and to watch them run and flap their tiny three inch wings is something to see over and again.
On our way to nest 5 the skies filled in with rain again and I lost all my light for shooting again. I checked my exposure before I lifted my lens to the perfect scene of a rooster ring neck pheasant with a hen both coming out off the field of dandelions that had gone to seed in the light rain. I was at 1/30th of a second at 800 ISO.
Well that would be perfect, if they were painted there and didn't move. I had no choice but to work with the light had. Just when I figured out how to balance my heavy lens pithed between my truck door and my truck window, that light rain turned into a 40 second flood. I was drenched, but laughing, when the thunder rolled out so loudly it echoed down the valley for about ten seconds and literally shook the truck.
I looked at Em who was working on her comic book in her seat and I thought she'd be scared, I mean it, that thunder would still have me running to my mom if I was a kid. My little brave-heart, looked up at me and raised her eyebrows which meant, "cool thunder, huh?"
"If you're okay with it." I replied.
The pheasants fed off the gravel on the road and the rain subsided about the time they moved into the grasses and disappeared just as my light came back. Still, I could search the world over and not have found such a lovely scene with those pheasants. I'm thankful for the image that will forever be in my head, and the few shots at 1/20th of a second with a slight blur.
Like I always say, "God owns the copyrights on all the perfect scenes, and I get to license the second bests."
At nest 5 the twins were up on the nest milling about looking for food. Up from them the family of 6 goslings I have been documenting when available. They were actually posing for me tonight.
By the time we reached nest 3 and 4 the light had dropped nothing again. It was making it difficult to see the nests at all, let alone the eaglets. Then the rains came down again and I turned my video on to the water lotus blooming in the marsh and the rain splattering off the lily pads.
I gave Em a high five, "Another day done--thanks girl."
On the way back however, I ran into that pair of pheasants again, and try as I might, I couldn't get a shot of him on the move. He'd lift his head out of the grasses and duck back down. The hen was too far into the deep grasses to see at all, I knew it was her though by the splash of tan and white I would catch as she traveled along through the grass.
The deer were just coming out of the woods as we took the last bend of the valley so we slowed for them looking for fawns, but found none. The geese of the goose marsh were all walking down the middle of the road with about 40 gosling's trailing behind. That is a scene I look forward to seeing every night I leave the valley.
I'm looking forward to day 143.
See you on the journey--
Lisa
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