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By First Nest report: New Stick for the Eagle Nest 12-29-2017
First Nest
Kate was incubating.
Petruchio went looking for a new stick for the nest – nests are in constant need of repair.
Watch for Petruchio’s feet as he snaps the branch from the dead tree.
Once he gets the stick to the nest, he places it where he thinks it should go.
Kate, being Kate, gets up and checks out the stick placement.
She screams her approval and then bails out of the nest.
It is Petruchio’s turn for doing some of the incubation.
The video may be better to view at my flickr site: https://flic.kr/p/21VmA5W

By First Nest has Eggs!!
Kate is sitting on egg(s)!
I believe she laid them yesterday, Christmas Day.
In the slide show you see her make a 90 second flight of 2 round trips.
She cannot leave the eggs without her body heat for more than about 2 minutes in this kind of weather.
I don’t know if she was looking for Petruchio to see if he was bringing food or she just needed some wing time.
That little white sliver in 2 of the 3 last photos
is what we will most often get to see of Kate while she is incubating.
Stay tuned:  hatching in about 35 days.

By new Life List bird for doc ellen – Long-tailed Duck, 3 photos
I wasn’t at all sure what kind of duck came in for a landing at Jordan Lake.
Got home and started investigating.
WooWee. I had photographed a female long-tailed duck.
It is rarely seen at Jordan Lake – it is a migratory bird that stays mostly on our coastline in the winter.
I am sorry the pictures are not the best: I hope to see the bird again and get a better shot to share.
BTW a great identification source is the bird app “Merlin” at the Cornell Ornithology site.   http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org

By JL Eagle Nest Report: First Nest 3 photos 12/11/2017
All the parent eagles are busy repairing nests and getting ready for a new season of eaglets.
 
First Nest
 
This is Petruchio eyeing the repair work on the nest.
 
He soon left to get another branch or a talon full of soft material for the nest cup.
 
 
This is Momma Kate headed across the cove.
Kate is usually one of the very first to begin laying eggs – usually between December 24 and January 1.

 

 

By Red-tailed Hawk and Crabby Crow
The trees across the lake erupted in noise and birds.
A flock of crows exploded from the trees.
In the middle of the crow crowd was a red-tailed hawk.
As you can see, the crow was quite direct in expressing his feelings.
The rest of the crow flock followed along, screaming encouragement to their cousin.
I never saw any feathers fly and the whole assemblage disappeared over the top of the trees.