Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Eagle Day at St. Marks

We made a run down to St. Marks on Sunday afternoon. When we arrived it was still cloudy and very few people were there, which can be nice. B puts the truck in drive and keeps his foot off the accelerator and we just coast down the road ---at 110mph!---(see recent blog about the broken speedometer) so we can see off the sides of the road. And we saw a lot in a couple of hours!

The biggest observations to share were the eagles. We saw an all time record of nine in different locations and only one at a time. One would suppose that some might have been the same that had just moved, but we definitely saw several different ones. One was a juvenile whose white feathers were not yet in, but its bill and feet and flight were unmistakable.

One was on the nest but I did not get a picture of it either. It is pretty far out for my lens.

This one B spotted and we got out and walked a little closer before it flew.

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Another one flew in near the boat ramp and tried to steal a fish from an osprey.

This is my attempt to get a picture us as they flew over us in an impressive “dog-fight”!

(That is the eagle!)

Oh, well!

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We don’t think the eagle was successful either, but it circled back around and came to perch in the osprey’s usual dead pine, as though to mock it.

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What a day for eagles!

1 comment:

  1. So is the eagle picture sort of like an Alligator picture?

    ReplyDelete