This Friday Sequence picks up where the 3/10 Dawn Chorus left off. It is another chance to get to know an individual bird up close and personal.
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
Flint Hills of Kansas
The Eagles I have watched this year had put together a plan enabling them to manipulate me by pulling my strings like I am some sort of puppet. With two sessions of photo success on my camera card despite the Eagle’s tactical adjustments I called it a day and went home to dream up a plan of my own, hoping to at least gain equal standing in order to get more and better pics of them doing what they do.
The first stage of my plan was to get out there before sunrise and get set up in a hidden spot close enough to click off some sharpies. The get there early and get set up part went exactly as hoped. However, how the rest of the plan happened wasn’t exactly as planned on my part. I didn’t plan on the Eagles being able to read my mind. I had deduced these Eagles do not roost here in my neighborhood. They roost all the way over at John Redmond Reservoir. That is a long way from where I expected to greet them which is about 3-4 miles (as the Eagle flies) from my home. What I didn’t expect is that they would make their flight from the lake to here in the dark before dawn. But that is exactly what they did. They were already there, perched in their favored lookout trees...waiting for me!
I took this shot later in the morning as there was not sufficient light available when I arrived. This tree is so much taller than any others in the area they can see for miles in every direction.
So much for best laid plans and all that. However, all was not lost as Eagle traffic to and from lookout trees tends to be somewhat constant and one of these comers and goers is about to make my day!
Close wasn't close enough. I cowered back thinking it might hit me! For the first time ever I actually felt a breeze of displaced air from the thrust of the bird’s powerful wings. It was THAT CLOSE! It paid me no mind and completed its downward circle to land on the same carcass, one of many, they had been working on two days prior. I guess my truck had been sitting there long enough without sound or movement it was accepted as being safe. In stead of getting out like I did before, this time I just rolled down my window and poked the camera out the opening. Maybe, I thought, my plan wasn’t so bad after all! Thus began one of my better Bald Eagle photo sessions ever. This shot was so close I had to very quickly nudge the manual focus ring to get it as clear as I did. In the heat of the moment I never remember that my lens has special settings for different ranges. I lucked out this time. Later, when I get spare time, I’ll work on this image in photoshop to remove the blurry wing feather edges and halo resulting from the abundance of light I added (thanks to the wonders of shooting RAW) to make this bird something other than a dark blob. I seriously thought it might fly right in through my window! But instead it sharply swerved down low to turn back toward the area inside the fence where a dead beef lay on the ground covered in frost.
The bird landed on a carcass and began to feed.
First rays of Sunshine on a frosty morning and this young Eagle is wasting no time getting hard at work.
The young Eagle seemed to be well acquainted with the task at hand. I’m not sure I have ever seen a more colorful Eagle body than this one.
One good bite deserves another.
Woodpeckers pick and pry. Eagles hook and rip. If you look close this sequence shows how Eagles can manipulate individual, or groups of feathers to increase or decrease the amount of pulling force applied. Check out the the secondary wing feathers. The angle determines the amount of air caught by the wing. Such a skill reminds me of how a horse can twitch an isolated spot of it’s hide to discourage a fly disturbing a single hair as it lands.
Both the angle of wing secondary feathers and also the angle of their toes are used to provide and regulate serious pulling power. Those things constantly change as the Eagle calculates the perfect amount of force to apply. The bird most assuredly does not want to fall over backwards to allow it’s most vulnerable body parts to be exposed.
Success! Another juicy tender morsel. I noted with interest the Eagles prefer the tender innards to large volume choices like the hind legs, although in these shots you can see the hind legs have mostly already been devoured. It was the same on each of the fifteen carcasses I found that this group of Eagles had been working on over the course of a week and a half. Curiously they refused to touch dead cattle who expired in less open area. I think that is because there was not as much room for them to make their arrivals and getaways with out getting feathers tangled in limbs, brush, etc*. Gotta protect those high value feathers! Feathers are life for an Eagle.
*I later learned the rancher had sprayed some of the carcasses with chemicals which “discourage” scavengers. He listed several kinds of spray and referred to them as “antibiotics”. He noted he did that to all carcasses that the Eagles were not feeding on and suspected those were “dark meat”. ‘Dark meat’ is foul smelling but is nevertheless sometimes sold in meat markets. This was all news to me and made me glad I do not eat beef (we eat bison meat). But I did learn something that alarmed me about what Eagles could eat. The rancher/landowner quickly covered his chemical comment by adding he doesn’t believe the spray is lethal to scavengers, just that they find it repulsive.
Every juicy prize is worthy of immediate ingestion. Although each prize may not be large Eagles work hard and fast enough their intake can add up to a hefty amount in pretty short order.
This spot is where the lead photo belongs in the sequence.
After each laborious effort concludes an Eagle will take time to look around in all directions to insure there is no immanent threat. So long as nothing sets off an alarm the Eagle will continue with its work. When it looks around I take a click every time its head moves, so I can study the movement and use that to learn how to move my head in the same way when dancing. I accumulated 350 +/- shots during this adventure. Most were very similar from one to the next. For this story I am trying to show major posture changes as the birds goes about its work.
After a thorough look around it gets down and dirty looking for more of the good stuff!
It never hurts to double check for potential trouble. It is also not a bad thing to relish the first rays of a new day’s Sunrise on a frosty cold morning. Then it’s back to work.
This is one golden Bald Eagle. Back to work, this time with more serious vigor. I love this view of wing feather intricacy. Life size!
Better look around one more time...
Full as a tick, the golden girl shows off her bulldog pose. I don’t know if it is male or female at this stage. I just go by what feels right at the time. This bird is larger than Streak and I presume they could be siblings. All I know for fact is they both have a lot of learning to do to become mature like Blue Wings and her mature partner. I am not naming this bird Regal Eagle. I am naming her Golden Girl, but either name fits and she is a Regal Eagle
Eagles do more looking around and up and down than anything else. They are always looking around. They can see you before you get there. Now I think they know you are coming before you start on the way. They completely befuddled me with their tactical prowess, just as my Swallows did on a daily basis last summer.
I will save the last of this feeding sequence for the closer, but before I let you go I will like to show you a few I took over at the Reservoir after becoming anxious that the Eagles had vacated/migrated early this year. They suddenly stopped coming to eat on the dead beef. But they did come back for posterity and flew from their perch in the tall lookout tree to buzz me as I sat up on AA trying to figure out a way to get some closeups. It seems they read my mind again! And the most generous (or curious?) of the bunch turned out to be Golden Girl again.
Golden Girl flies over for a final inspection. I am standing in the road beside my little truck as she flies just above power line height. She made three passes to look me over.
After the Eagles had flown circles overhead they took off toward the west and I didn’t see them again for over a week.
I went over to the Reservoir because I know the Eagles roost there and that is where I can most dependably find them early or late in the day. My fears were dissuaded when I found them there again. They rewarded me with some great action that I didn’t do an altogether great job of capturing, but I did accumulate some pretty fun stuff in the effort.
I was elated to find Streak alive and well.
Who would have thought Streak has blue eyes? He doesn’t. The light is just striking his nictitating membrane in such a way it makes his eye look (very!) blue. Big blue eye
Uh oh. Streak seems to have acquired a new found attitude! Time to listen in on some Eagle talk…
“Hey you down there, back up a step or two and Ima paintball yo ass!”
Streak repositions and shows what might be cause for that newfound attitude. See that big blob of white dead center on his forehead? *Don’t forget that. It ain’t exactly natural.
Streak decides to play a little game. “Now you see me...”
“...And now I’m just laughing at you trying cause, now ya don’t!” Eagle version of burying it’s head in the sand.
Remember Streak’s spot of attitude? *Blue Wings was perched higher in the thick limbs above Streak, but now bails out with definite purpose.
The Eagle began herding a lone Mallard to keep it near the shoreline. They flew past a rock abutment protruding from the dam, then around it so I could no longer see them. I waited and waited but never saw either of them emerge. I knew what had happened. Out of sight Blue Wings had nailed that duck. After an extended time Blue Wings suddenly appeared flying straight up the rocky slope of the dam, then over it, dropping out of sight again over on the overflow side. I ran to my illegally parked but still running truck (lucky there was no traffic) and began backing up on the very narrow roadway the half mile to where I could turn onto the sideroad leading down to the outflow pool. That took awhile! It took more time to go slowly down the trail to get to the pool at the bottom of the dam. That is where the Neosho River resumes flowing downstream, and is the favorite hangout for all kinds of birds, including feeding Eagles.
The main feast had happened on the lakeshore but there must have been leftovers our bird didn’t want to leave, and they are firmly grasped in those fearsome talons. Flying with purpose
She perched high in a tree way over on the other side of the Neosho River to finish her feast, preen, and watch everything that might happen. Five adventurous Great Blue Herons flew by right below her. She noticed with interest but made no move other than her head following the action.
Lineatus added some very interesting and informative posts on molt that can enable more precise identification of individual birds to last Sunday’s Dawn Chorus. I think her comments are well worth another look. Check out 3/10 Dawn Chorus comments to read them again. Since I have a pair of adult Eagles in the tribe I watch I can’t tell the difference between the two mature Eagles when at the distance I usually get photos. The bird I call Blue Wings is slightly larger so I presume she is the female. The partner also has a leaner looking face. This is a distant shot but that face and head do not resemble “lean” in any way, so I’m going with Blue Wings!
And that was that! Now back to the final pic of Golden Girl. She will have the last say today.
“I’ve done what I wanted to, so there’s nothing left for me to do save bid you adieu.” Golden Girl
Adieu!
Okay, YOU get the last say...
