Bald Eagles

Bobbleton

Explorer
Mar 12, 2004
466
46
NJ
Well . . . i went out yesterday to the manasquan reservoir expecting ducks and canada geese--but I was surprised nicely.

I walked down the short trail from my car to the water . . . loud obnoxious and oblivious as ever--when I saw this:

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Here are my other two pics:
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I have more photos, but they're pretty much all the same. My camera performed less than admirably . . . possibly because of the cold and also possibly because of it being an old beat up piece of crap. But whether or not they're spectacular, I got my eagle photos!! Not a bad day!

-Bob
 

uuglypher

Explorer
Jun 8, 2005
381
18
Estelline, SD
Bobbleton said:
Well . . . i went out yesterday to the manasquan reservoir expecting ducks and canada geese--but I was surprised nicely....But whether or not they're spectacular, I got my eagle photos!! Not a bad day!

-Bob

Way to go, Bob! Nice shots! Doesn't a sight like that just make your heart swell a size or two?

Dave
 

NJSnakeMan

Explorer
Jun 3, 2004
332
0
34
Atlantic County
Awesome that you found that eagle, my camera has been acting weird lately too..... it won't let me upload any pics to my computer, when i plug the USB into the slot, it says "no USB connection detected" ... sup with that?
 

Nite Owl

New Member
Nov 23, 2005
10
0
Delaware County, PA
ohhh any day you walk out and stumble upon an eagle is a GOOD day!!! neat photo!!!! Saw a big hawk last weekend but it was too far away to get that big of a shot!!!
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
26,011
8,779
Bob,

Great photo's! Thanks for posting them. I always enjoy your photo's.

Have any of you read the newest or the previous Readers Digest? There is an article in there about a woman in Alaska who feeds them to keep them alive. She drags a trash can out every day filled with meat that is donated by local businesses and throws the meat around. There is a photo with the article showing around 20 of them all around her. One is just a few feet away. She has been doing it for I believe it said 25 years. Photographers from all over come to her property to photograph them, and it is estimated that 80% of all photo's of Bald Eagles are taken in her yard!

If you use rechargeable batteries that may be the problem. Last weekend mine got cold and every one would not work. And when I brought them home the camera would turn on but not upload. I had to go out and buy regular batteries to get the photo's out of my camera.

Guy
 
Here are some shots I got last week at Ludow Mill Pond down in Dividing Creek. There were six of them (2 adults, 4 juviniles) hanging around along with some herons and a pair of Red Tails.

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Great Blue heron
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Steve

Edit: It was pretty amazing to see six at once. But I wonder.....in twenty years will we think of them as we do geese?
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
26,011
8,779
Nice Steve! Jes liked the dark blue photo in the middle of them all.

Guy
 
Thanks. That photo is a juvinile. The 2nd photo, of the soaring pair, are juviniles also but older as they almost look like the adults. They classify juviniles as 1st year, 2nd year, etc. I'll have to do some reading to see how long it takes to become an adult. (In my case it seems to be more than 50 years. :D)

Steve

Edit: White head and tail, and dark underwings are gradually acquired in four years
 

uuglypher

Explorer
Jun 8, 2005
381
18
Estelline, SD
BEHR655 said:
White head and tail, and dark underwings are gradually acquired in four years[/I]

Results of long-term observation of nest-banded balds show that it takes four to five years to gain full adult plumage.

By the bye - some folks in Homer, AK, consider that little ol' lady who feeds the bald eagles scrap from the fish processing plant on the Homer Spit to be having a less-than-salutary effect on the eagles in that the area. Eagle biologists are concerned that the availability of "free meals" (free of biological cost - energy expenditure ) for low these many years is altering the migratory habits of many of those locally bred birds which would otherwise enter the normal seasonal migration of the species.

Granted, it's a great place to watch eagles close-up, and is a great tourist attraction (if you don't mind them being semi-domesticated - like, for example, Canada geese short-stopped during migration each year until many decide to stay year-round as residents on recently prepared broad swards of easily grazed grass where open grass grazing had been heretofore unavailable).

If you really want to see A LOT of eagles, visit Haines AK in late November and December when a quirk of local geology and hydrology results in 1.) a failure of the Chilkoot River to freeze which 2.) thus welcomes a massive run of dog salmon up the Chilkoot which 3.) attracts several THOUSANDS of bald eagles to the valley of the Chilkoot. They roost in the trees along the river - tens of eagle to upwards of 80 to 100 in the larger trees by the river. Thousands of eagles along the banks and gravel bars have a feast for the duration of the salmon run - as do the occasional grizzly, fox, and wolf. The road from Haines up to Haines junction on the AlCan highway runs right beside the river. Pull over to the side wherever you like and take your pick which of the 500 or so eagles within camera range you'd like to memorialize on film or with a concatenation of pixels. It's a breathtaking sight. When the run's over, the eagles disperse southward. This has apparently been going on since the end of the last Ice Age, so the eagles have accomodated nicely to the seasonally available banquet that's not likely to end until melting glaciers and warming of the Gulf of Alaska change the migratory schedule of the dog salmon. But that's less likely to be as abrupt a change as will be the death or disability of the little lady on the Homer spit. What will her fat-'n'-happy eagles do then, having lost the urge to migrate to seasonally appropriate fishing grounds?

When we "tame nature" it's generally more immediately to nature's peril than to our own.

Dave
 

woodjin

Piney
Nov 8, 2004
4,361
344
Near Mt. Misery
Yeah, you would be hard pressed to find an example when feeding wild animals has ever benefited them as a species. Great shots Steve!! Great in flight shots!! I saw an eagle in the forked river mountains a couple weeks back. It was from a distance but I did get a classic eagle screech out of him!! Kind of odd I thought since there was no water in the immediate area.

Jeff
 

uuglypher

Explorer
Jun 8, 2005
381
18
Estelline, SD
woodjin said:
Kind of odd I thought since there was no water in the immediate area.

Jeff

I remember bumping a mature bald eagle off a carrion snack (road-kill rattler) in west Texas and thinking the same thing ..."no water - what the Hell's he doin' here?" but then realized that once he got up a few hundred feet he was probably within line-of-sight of both the Rio Pecos and the Rio Grande.

So how high would that eagle in the pines have had to get before he could spy water? If he was a migrant who had recently fed, he had no reason to be in the immediate vicinity of water and may simply have chosen the first reasonable roosting site along his journey's path. No Atlantic Flyway migrant is ever far from water.

Dave
 
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