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Yesterday I noticed a grey military plane parked over at the airport. Curious as to what country it belonged to, I got the little pair of binoculars out of my desk and had a look. At first I thought it was from France but later saw it was from New Zealand.
While I was looking at it, some motion caught my eye. There was a very large bird flying about not too far off the ground over the grassy areay next to the nearest runway. Usually, the largest birds I see over there are vultures, but they're smaller and generally only hang out over there to catch thermals for altitude. Although I couldn't get a good look, the markings were also very non-vulture. The head looked light colored and the tail was white with a brown band at its end.
Then I remembered that there's a mated pair of bald eagles who build a nest and raise kids every year north of the airport. I thought maybe what I'd seen was a young'ish eagle. A quick web search resulted in a site that had examples of bald eagle plumage from fledgling to adult and, yup, the picture of a 2.5 year old bird looked a lot like the one I'd seen.
There are a couple webcams pointed at that nest year round, so I went to the website and saw that they post notes and pictures about the goings-on there. Earlier this week, there were a couple pictures of a subadult eagle that came to the nest and poked around a little before leaving. I'm guessing that's the same bird I saw.
I saw the eagle further down along the runway a little later. I couldn't get the camera out in time to try for a picture of her. For the rest of the day, I looked outside often in hopes of spotting her and maybe getting a picture, but had no luck.
Still, it was pretty cool to see a half-grown eagle. I just hope she doesn't hang around the airport any more, even it if means I won't see her again.
While I was looking at it, some motion caught my eye. There was a very large bird flying about not too far off the ground over the grassy areay next to the nearest runway. Usually, the largest birds I see over there are vultures, but they're smaller and generally only hang out over there to catch thermals for altitude. Although I couldn't get a good look, the markings were also very non-vulture. The head looked light colored and the tail was white with a brown band at its end.
Then I remembered that there's a mated pair of bald eagles who build a nest and raise kids every year north of the airport. I thought maybe what I'd seen was a young'ish eagle. A quick web search resulted in a site that had examples of bald eagle plumage from fledgling to adult and, yup, the picture of a 2.5 year old bird looked a lot like the one I'd seen.
There are a couple webcams pointed at that nest year round, so I went to the website and saw that they post notes and pictures about the goings-on there. Earlier this week, there were a couple pictures of a subadult eagle that came to the nest and poked around a little before leaving. I'm guessing that's the same bird I saw.
I saw the eagle further down along the runway a little later. I couldn't get the camera out in time to try for a picture of her. For the rest of the day, I looked outside often in hopes of spotting her and maybe getting a picture, but had no luck.
Still, it was pretty cool to see a half-grown eagle. I just hope she doesn't hang around the airport any more, even it if means I won't see her again.