August-September, 2022
Ok, maybe you folks are correct and I talk with eagles. I don’t know. But I do seem to find them everywhere I go. Even here at home!
On my camping trip this morning, I drove that back road just outside the campground and found riverside access to the Nisqually River, where you could drive right into the river if you wanted. Then this afternoon I drove a bit further afield and found a wonderful high-ground view out over the Nisqually River delta, and then found an interesting low view of the grasses where the river enters the flat bottom land of the Nisqually River delta.
Both of those excursions and those unexpected discoveries were wonderful. I love finding those off-the-beaten-path things.
Late in the afternoon, after a full day of exploring, I drove back to my campsite at Riverbend Campground and settled back into my trailer. I put my supper on to cook and then brought my chair out to the edge of the river to sit with the other camper-folk who were sitting out there too. Everyone chatted with each other amicably, although mostly all of us were quiet, watching the river, a few of us taking photos of the river, etc. It was a lovely summer evening!
The RED arrow on the right points to my chair at river’s edge. The RED arrow on the left points to my neighbors’ chairs at river’s edge. Nice folks.
The sun was starting to set in the west, behind me. I looked along the opposite bank of the river, over to that peninsula of gravel and river rock around which the river makes its tight bend.
And … I heard it. An eagle call. Off to the left. So I turned, and there it was. Off on the far side of that rocky gravel outcrop.
But it didn’t end there. While we humans pointed and exclaimed and took photos, I heard another eagle call, further off to the left and above the river. A second eagle!
It’s in the photo below. The head of the eagle is a white dot, just a tiny bit above the center of the photo below, and a tiny bit to the left of center in the photo below.
It was a long way away, so my zoomed closeup photo below doesn’t show much detail.
But we all watched that eagle in the tree chomp down on a fish, yum!
Two of the campers here this evening were local folks and told the rest of us that they camp here often. They said that these two eagles are a pair, a couple. Eagles mate for life. Females are larger than males, and have a deeper lower pitched “voice” than males. But still, even the local folks couldn’t tell which one of this pair was which this evening. I just thought it was amazing. 🙂
I brought my supper out to my chair by the river to eat. Eagles do that, why not me? The sunset deepened. The eagles had long since left. But I sat and enjoyed the memory of all that I had seen and done on this beautiful day.
