Majestic Bird–Bald Eagle

We feel so very lucky to live in an area that has bald eagles sightings, especially in the winter time.One lucky day mid December my husband called as he was on his way to help a neighbor move his cows to another stock field.  He excitedly told me he had seen a couple of bald eagles about a quarter of a mile from our house.  I was rushing to get dressed to go see them when the phone rang again.  (Have to admit I was still in my nightgown but had also put on a sweat shirt and sweat pants to pad around the house that morning.)My neighbor asked if I was home and to go outside and look in the tree on the north side of the house as a bald eagle just landed in it.  Grabbed my camera and went out the front door and sure enough there it was. (By the way I was dressed by this time.) This was a mature eagle and it sat there for quite sometime as I clicked away with my camera but eventually had enough of the paparazzi and flew away.  I am thinking it was one of the two John saw earlier.

Later that morning I had to run to town to get groceries and noticed two large shapes (eagles of course) across the road from our house in the field.  They don’t look that big when you see them from farther away but they are huge birds.  There was one adult and one juvenile, probably the same adult that was in our tree earlier and the pair John saw too.

 

Here are some zoomed and cropped photos of those two birds.  I think there were several more bald eagles in the area that day too as John said they spotted several more that morning.  The migrating geese were flying overhead quite a bit that day and we do know they follow them at least partway to their winter quarter and pick off the weak and dying.  Whenever the geese migrate we are more apt to see more bald eagles then too.  The next day we didn’t see any or few geese and no bald eagles either.

We do have one or two resident bald eagles in the area all winter long though.  I see one almost every time I cross our river sitting on a dead tree that has partially fallen into the water.  No matter how often we see them them it is still a thrill.

Until Later

Lynn
PS - here is a webpage with bald eagle facts and information about the mighty birds.

Eagle Watch

I have spent time lately watching the live Bald Eagle Cam of the nest near Decorah, Iowa where the same pair of Bald Eagles have nested this year.  The photo above I captured from the live video this morning and you can see it snowed overnight and was still snowing some yet this morning.  I believe this is the female eagle.  The female has sort of gray patches of feathers along her eyes and is much larger than the male.  The male’s head is much more tidy and he has an all white head.  His eyes are just a little different than the females too...told you I spent a lot of time watching this pair of eagles.  This is the male below.I will share with you how I got the photos of the eagles.  To capture a photo from the live video I first enlarged the screen by clicking on the dark rectangle at the bottom right of the live video screen.  See photo below.  This opens another window that is just the video.The next step is to click on the print screen button on your computer keyboard.  My desktop works a little different than my lap top so will explain both.  On the desktop I just click on the Print Screen button (will probably be in the top row of buttons – mine is on the top right hand side.)  On my laptop I have to hold down the FN button on the bottom left hand side and then click on the Print Screen button.  The Print Screen button is often times abbreviated to "Prt SC" if you can’t find it.

Step 3 is to paste the photo you just captured into a Word program or photo program.  I use Photoshop Elements where I crop it and sharpen it a little if needed then save it.  The close up photos were captured when the Raptor Resource people zoomed in on the Bald Eagle with their camera that is mounted in the tree above the eagles.  The amount of detail on some of the video is amazing as you can tell from this close up photo.  This morning they zoomed in on the female on the nest and were zooming in on the feathers on her back and you could actually see the eagle moving as it breathed.  Amazing to be sure!

If you stop in and look at the video make sure you scroll down and see what else is on the web page.  There is a Facebook site that has updated info, a Social Stream of chatting visitors, captured videos, info about eagle nests, young, eggs, etc.  I can spend a lot of time just watching and reading the Social Stream of chats and the other information on this website.  I am typing this post up on Friday night for posting on Saturday and the chatter is that if the female is going to lay another egg it will probably be tonight.  Will update you if that is the case.  As you can see from the photo above there are only 2 eggs in the nest right now.  This was captured after the male left the nest and the female came back to sit on the eggs so was uncovered only a minute or so.  The third egg was laid around 8 pm on Friday night.  Here are several more photos I captured during the day on Friday if you are interested in seeing them.

Decorah Iowa Eagles VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Take a look at the website ( www.upstream.tv/decoraheagles )and you too might just become as addicted as I am to watching these magnificent birds.

Until later,
Lynn

Good Start For 2012

Hope all readers of this blog have a great 2012!  The first day of the new year makes me reflect on what I did or didn’t do on my mental list.  I never write down resolutions as they just don’t get completed and writing them down makes me feel guilty if I don’t do them so just reflect and make a mental list.  Maybe this year I will make a general list to refer to and see how that goes.

New Years Day here was sunny with moderate temperatures around 40.  We packed up our food and gifts to travel to our last Christmas gathering of John’s family and before we crossed the river we noticed 3 large birds just soaring overhead.  Since I had my camera with me I had John stop and I changed to my 55-250 zoom lens and shot a few photos.  After I got zoomed in I could see they were not adult Bald Eagles as they did not have white heads and tails but we both concluded they were juvenile Bald Eagles as they were way too large to be hawks, wrong kind of head to be vultures and we don’t have Golden Eagles here.I had zoomed up as far as I could and then when I edited this photo I cropped it to get the eagles the size you could see them.  I was lucky to get two in one photo as they were not that close together most of the time.

We continued on and stopped on the bridge over the river as there were two adults sitting in a tree just north of the bridge where the river rounds a bend.  As you can see this is a small river.If you look closely at the above photo you can see the two specks that are the adult Bald Eagles.  This photo was not zoomed clear to the max so took more zoomed up and then cropped to make them easy to see.  It is always so exciting to spot one of these magnificent birds and to see more than one is super exciting.  I wanted a photo of the adults flying so as we were parked on the bridge (no traffic on our highway by the way – think one pickup came by the whole time we sat there.)  John beeped the car horn and they didn’t move so he got out and flapped his arms – wish I would have gotten a video of that but instead I concentrated my camera on the eagles.  The one on the right flew in a big circle then back to the same branch but I did manage to get a shot of it a ways away.  Again I was zoomed to the max then cropped the photo to get it to the size you can see.  It is not perfectly in focus but you can see some of the markings and it’s eye.Here is the original photo of this one so you can see how much I cropped it.  I am guessing it was between 1/8 to 1/4 of a mile away.After leaving the bridge we saw another adult flying then as we crossed the next intersecting highway bridge over the same river we spotted another adult sitting in a tree.  That is the most we have seen this season.  We have seen one Bald Eagle at a time occasionally but not every time we cross the river and once in a while one flies close to our house.  Four adults and 3 juveniles is wonderful!  No matter how many times we see them we are always in awe and try to stop and watch them for a while. 

What a great way to start our new year!

Until Later,
Lynn

On the Mend and Beautiful Sight!

Ended up going to the Dr. today and now am on an antibiotic. No wonder I just didn't feel up to par lately. First time I have had sinus infection since I had sinus surgery last fall. Have a couple of other complications but should be feeling better soon.

I did take the Dr. orders to heart and rested most of the afternoon. I did do a few loads of laundry but mostly laid around on the couch and finished reading a book.

Hope the rest of you have had a chance to sew today since I didn't feel up to it.

I did see about 7 deer this morning running for all they were worth and cross the highway in front of me on the way to my Dr. appointment. Glad I had time to slow down as they sure didn't stop or slow down and jumped over the fence on the other side without breaking stride.
I also had the privilege to see 3 bald eagles about 4 miles from home along the river on my way to Hastings this morning. This year we have not spotted very many until the last week or so and that was one lone eagle circling over the river and highway. They are majestic birds and I am excited and thrilled every time I see one.
These two photos below are not of any of the birds I saw this morning but photos I took in March of 2006. That particular morning when we got up and looked out the sewing room window this bald eagle was sitting in one of our old ratty black walnut trees just on the edge of the yard - really, really close to the house.

I grabbed my camera and got two photos of it sitting in the tree then it looked at me and flew off and I got a photo of it leaving. We were so excited to have one so close. If you look very closely at the in flight photo you can see it's head is turned toward me and you can see it's eye and beak.

We have not had bald eagles in our area for that many years. They started showing up around the time our youngest daughter was a senior in high school. At that time we would see them all winter long and knew which trees to look in to see if there were any roosting. They tended to roost in the same trees all winter long.

I was asked to do a lecture yesterday at a local museum during their annual quilt show. Most of the women there had never seen any quilts as small as mine so had fun telling them how I made them and showing them off. There weren't too many quilts on display for their show so that was sad as the museum tries hard to have activities of local interest. It wasn't a long drive and was nice to show my quilts off and get a chance to talk to a few of the local women attending the show so was worth it.

Lynn