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!
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!
The bird landed on a carcass and began to feed.
*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.
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.
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.
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.
And that was that! Now back to the final pic of Golden Girl. She will have the last say today.
Adieu!
Okay, YOU get the last say...