Hello Eagle Friends,
Today was a perfect weather day in the valley. It was 78 degrees when I arrived and mostly cloudy. I brought Dale with, my male German shepherd. He was so happy to
have a field day again he laid across my seat with his head on my center console the
entire trip down.
He picked up the critter trail immediately and began spraying his marks on the others.
I'm guessing it was probably a coyote, maybe it was my lone wolf. Maybe it was the mate that didn't get shot a couple months ago a few miles away.
Daedee was on the nest with twins. I am thinking that this time next week she's going to be working with the kids teaching them how to step out on the west limb. Daniels Charlie and her preened each other, but each time she would reach to him he would come back and bite the tip of her beak.
He seemed to expect her to sit still however, while he reached over to preen her.
D'ODEE didn't care about preening at all. In fact, all he did was stand up, stretch and walk over and try and steal that fish again from under the clutches of Daedee's talons.
I know it was a fish because he stabbed a free bite and swallowed it quickly. When you are the younger eaglet, and have had to fight to eat all your life, you can probably understand why he eats first, then preens.
In two hours we watched dozens of turkey vultures circling the area. Then Dale began to chew on a willow sapling and it broke it off. He handed me the three foot tree and
I snapped it in half tossing one stick into the tall grasses.
He retrieved it and I threw it again, and again, and again. Then I threw it further out and he sniffed, and circled, but didn't seem to know where it went. I was still watching as he came back through the grasses and snatched the other half of the tree
and went back out to where I had thrown the first half of the tree, circled and came
trotting back to me setting the second half of the tree in my hand.
He was trying to convince me that this was the first stick, and by the expression on his face, I think he knew I wasn't buying it.
We left and moved on to nest 2 where we found 59 day old Terry Gail up on the nest.
She was peaking out from behind the trunk that is on the west side of their nest.
There was nothing going on at nest 6. I looked around for Dick or Linda on their favorite perches, but didn't see them there, or above the river or streams they like to fish.
I found the gosling's that are getting their adult feathers. This one in the photo was sitting so contently on the edge of the marsh that he seemed to be enjoying the sounds
of nature.
At nest 5 the twins were walking around the nest, but the parents must have been on the hunt or their dinner as they were alone, too.
At nest 3 and 4 I didn't find any activity going on. I shot a few images of the area scenes and started heading back home.
I found a few deer out early tonight. One had several ticks hanging off it's head, and bites so numerous that I wondered if it would become ill.
Then I noticed a blueish-purple flower, the name escapes me, but it is one of my favorite June flowers and there were two of them in the ditch across from where I found that first snapping turtle in the road a couple days back.
I photographed it in the flat, overcast, shadow free light, and I popped it with flash and then just with the ambient light and I decided to bring it home for Em. She wanted to come with today but I wouldn't let her with not knowing what critter was out at nest 1 yesterday.
I thought it would cheer her up. As I type it sits in a little cup of water, folded up and asleep until the first light of tomorrow.
I'm looking forward to day 149.
See you on the journey--
Lisa
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