July, 2022
In my first blog post about this camping trip, I mentioned I had a number of eagle sightings while I was here. Well, it didn’t take long to get that started!! My very first morning here I got up, got dressed, did my morning chores inside the trailer, then went outside intending just to do some trailer checks, take a few photos, and head back into the trailer for coffee and breakfast.
I wasn’t outside for 30 seconds when I heard eagle calls. Eagles have a high pitched call, very high. Mostly it’s a call that lasts for a second or two or three, but also some short squeaky calls. They are definitely heard in the video below around time marks :06 and :10 and :17 … and :34. Turn your sound on!
It seemed like just one eagle. It had to be close by. I sure wanted to find it! So I gulped down my coffee and my breakfast, and then hiked up the road towards where I thought the calls were coming from.
As I walked up the road above, a man was walking down the road towards me. He said “do you hear the eagle?” I said, “yes!” He said, “Oh cool most people don’t hear it.” And then he said, “you can see it up there, up the road, do you know where?” I said, “no but I’d love to know.” He said “Go up to campsite #x [I’ve now forgotten which campsite it was], and walk in through the campsite and keep going towards the cliff above the water and look for a grey tree trunk that forms a V. Stop there. There’s a nest in another tree out over the water but you can see it right through the “V” in the grey tree trunk. That’s where the eagle is. It’s a juvenile and it’s getting ready to fly.”
I said, “Wow!” or something else equally intelligent. 🙂 And I asked, “It hasn’t flown yet?” He said, “No, my wife and I have to leave today and we HATE to leave. We’d love to see it fly for the first time in its life.” I said, “Wow”. Pretty dumb to keep saying that, but he sure understood, and he commented on my camera and hoped I would get some photos. He and I talked for a bit, but frankly I was so drawn to see the eagle, if it was still there … and he could see my enthusiasm. He could see I wanted to go. He kept smiling a big smile. And we finally parted … he walked back down the road to his/their campsite and I truly trotted! up the road to the campsite he mentioned and then clambered back in through the woods looking for that grey tree trunk that forms a “V”. I found it! It’s right smack in the middle of the photo below.
Maybe you can already see the juvenile eagle out there, in between the V trunks. Let me zoom in.
The nest is on top of the tree out there. The nest has been there for so many years that the tree no longer grows UP, just out.
She (or he) kept jumping around, flapping around, calling and calling, stretching its wings, big stretches of its wings, such big stretches and flapping that it did lift off the nest a number of times, completely in the air, but it always came right straight back down to land on the nest or on a nearby branch. It wasn’t quite ready to take that leap, to trust its wings.
The parents were in the area. I could hear them too but not very often and not very loud. They didn’t make much noise, didn’t call much, just every once in a long while I’d hear a squeak from one of them (the female has a lower pitched call than the male does). They did not come back to the nest to help this juvenile, they did not come back with food, they squeaked to let the young’un know they were there and then they just waited.
I wanted to stand there all day, but I’d been there about an hour and realized it could be days yet before the youngster took off on its first flight. So I went back to my trailer and got ready to go see other things during this first day here. But you can bet I went back later in the day to check on this youngster.
More photos coming. 🙂