Up against tough competition, the eagle wins again for creating the most excitement. He keeps me guessing. He’s here big time for a day of repeated visits. Then he’s gone for 1-3 days making me worry. The other day, after not being seen for a couple days he came swooping in for a piece of ham fat and flew back toward the nest that is 1.14 mile away, according to Google Earth. In fifteen minutes he was back, grabbing another piece and heading toward the nest again. Then came the big surprise when he came in the dark at 8:06 PM, grabbed a piece and flew up to a branch to eat it. When he was flying up to the branch, his dark wings and body were invisible and his head and tail were barely visible. When he got up against the overcast sky there was enough light to see him like a shadow against it. That was the first I knew that eagles can fly at night.
Today, he flew over, which made me put out his usual meat, but he didn’t come back. A few hours later, he flew over again but kept going. An hour and a half later he came back flying wing to wing with his mate only two or three feet away. He didn’t stop to get what I’d put out and continued with his mate toward the nest. Less than an hour later, though, he was back. He swooped down, grabbed the meat, and flew to a branch to eat it. After about 10 minutes of letting him eat, I walked out with a bigger piece and saw his reaction. He knew what I was doing. He might have been done with that piece because he turned around, faced me, and watched as I put it in place. I walked back inside, leaving the door open as I grabbed a camera and stood in the doorway entirely visible. The meat was about 10 feet away from me, is all. He hesitated, but not long. Suddenly he leaped into flight heading straight toward me and the meat. Would he actually take it with me right there? The picture shows him coming directly with his eyes looking ahead, but he chickened out at the last moment and headed back toward the nest empty handed. I was surprised he came that close.
I’ve been saying him, but I really don’t know if the eagle is a him or her. Could he be the female of the pair? It would help explain his absence for days at a time because females do by far the most incubating in the first weeks after laying the eggs. The males spend the most time as the eggs get closer to hatching. I’ll never know, but I very much suspect that our pontoon boat ride to the nest and the den where Lily gave birth to Hope will reveal eaglet heads sticking up from the nest. But it could also be that he finds a road kill and joins other eagles, ravens, and crows in eating it for a couple days.
Mink Spot
Other news is that the mink that also goes days without an appearance, making me worry he’d been eaten by one of the fishers, greeted me five minutes after I arrived a 5:45 AM this morning. He came out from under the front deck and headed up the stairs. Nothing was out yet. He checked around and went back down the steps. Then he surprised me with his enthusiasm when I stepped out with a small piece of chicken and said, ”Come Mink.” He immediately came running up the stairs to my outstretched hand, stood up and took the chicken then went down under the front deck to eat or cache it. I was putting out more meat for him but he was back quicker than I thought. He stood and watched where I was putting it and made me feel good that he calmly watched me walk past him as I headed back inside to quickly grab a camera to get a picture of him and took it lit by the deck light. I named him Spot for a double reason. He has a round white spot on his chest the size of a quarter, and he has a tiny spot of white on the side of his neck that you can see in the picture. The hairs are exactly like they were when I took a picture of him here last year at about this time.
Woodchuck
It is the same for the woodchuck that revealed his presence on April 2nd, just a week earlier than I took a picture of him last year, identified by the misshapen ear you can see.
Red fox
Then, just now, the nice male fox came. I put an egg out and went back inside. He took it and went to bury it. While he was gone, I put out some small pieces of ham fat that he also took to bury, but quacking mallards on the thawing lake made him leave the fat to run where he could better see and/or hear what he wasn’t accustomed to. He eventually returned to bury the egg. Then, coming up to take more meat, he made me feel good how calm he was, letting me walk past him to go inside without him shying away. He reminded me of the bears that became so accustomed to me and others that they grew to ignore us, considering us inconsequential. We were able to record more information about bear life in the wild than had ever been possible. I suspect that such studies could be done with a lot of wild species, if a person spent enough time becoming ignored.
Common redpoll
As a final note, despite the excitement that goes with the eagle, mink, woodchuck, and fox, the best picture is one that Peggy Stubbs took a few days ago of a common redpoll male sitting pretty. She captured the pink breast and red head about as well as could be done, so we’ll end with that picture.
Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center