Adele Freeland and I had heard about the existence of a bald eagle's nest somewhere in the area. We'd looked for it once before and been unable to find it, but had just heard that one of the eaglets had been seen sitting up on the edge of the nest strengthening his wings in preparation for fledging, so we decided we'd go look for it again. Our original plan had been to take the day off and go wander around downtown Seattle. Neither one of us had been to town in quite a while, so we wanted to check things out and see what was new. An eagle's nest though. How can we possibly resist the siren call of an eagle's nest? It's plain and simple. We can't and we didn't, so Seattle was put on the back burner for another day, while we grabbed our binoculars and cameras and headed out for a day of birding. This time we had a better idea where to look.
The first thing we found was this handsome turtle. I managed to get a shot of it, but it crawled off before Adele could capture it with her camera, so I promised her that I'd post my photo in the blog. Here it is, Adele! Maybe, if he had wings and a few feathers we could call it a new species of bird, but I'm not too sure the Audubon folks are going to let us get away with that.
Next, we ran into these young mallards. They're probably only about a year old. There must have been a dozen of them and they all started waddling in our direction the moment they spotted us. It was obvious that people had been feeding them and they were looking for a handout, but neither one of us had anything to offer them.
After staring at us expectantly and receiving no reward for their effort, they decided that the whole begging for food thing just took too much energy, so immediately plopped down where they stood and promptly went to sleep.
Next, we found a mud puddle that was attracting a whole lot of attention. Barn swallows were busily visiting the puddle and gathering up beaksful of material with which to build their nests. They were so intent on what they were doing that they barely paid us any attention at all, narrowly missing our bodies as they swooped around them to get to and from the puddle.
As we started to walk past this tree with a big cavity in it's side, we could hear the chaotic peeping of hungry little mouths inside, begging for food. We couldn't see what was inside of the cavity, so we gave the tree a little space and waited to see what showed up. We didn't have to wait very long before this beautiful red-breasted sapsucker showed up at the hole with a mouthful of insects for her hungry brood.
Look at how beautiful she is. Also, take a moment to examine her eyes. This little sapsucker looks completely sane. How come the other sapsuckers I've photographed all look like they've been hitting the loco juice a little too hard? Most of my sapsucker photos depict birds who look mad as hatters, but this sweet little bird looks perfectly rational.....well, for a bird.
While we were waiting for the sapsucker to show up, this gorgeous mother wood duck swam by with her train of ducklings following close behind. Look at all of the beautiful colors in her wing flash. She's lovely!
A great blue heron stood on the opposite side of the lake. This is very close to where we began our circuit of lake and we hadn't seen any sign of a heron when we were over there. I don't know if he was standing there all of the time, or flew in quietly while we were occupied looking at something else. Doesn't he look like one of those rubber toys that someone has grabbed at both ends and stretched out as far as they could?
We saw a lot of cedar waxwings, plus sparrows, juncos, chickadees, and robins.
And then we found the bald eagle's nest. The father is on the upper-right-side of the photo, patiently guarding the nest in the lower-left-side of the photo.
This is the eglet peeking over the edge of nest. He's nearly as big as his parents now.
And, here he is doing his wing exercises. One, two, three, four.....two, two, three, four......three, two, three, four.....pant, pant, pant. We ran into a neighbor who was taking her daily walk along the trail. She told us that she'd seen the baby making short fly-abouts yesterday. He should leave the nest any day now.
Here's another photograph of the proud papa.
We went in search of a lazuli bunting, but weren't able to find it. Still, all-in-all, it was an amazing day of birding. Good friends, good birding, good food, what's not to like? This was much better than a trip to Seattle!
Teri I. Lenfest
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