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.