This morning Captain Doug and I watched Captain Mom swoop past and catch a small fish. You can see the fish in the water just in front of her approaching talons in the first photo. Like the great mom she is, she promptly took it to the nest for her chicks.
Looking left to right: Mom Godiva getting a piece of fish ready to feed to her rapidly growing chicks, a chick right against the main trunk of the tree and then the second chick to the right of the main trunk.
The whole family! That is Dad Hershey perched way to the left, then in the nest it is Mom Godiva, a chick trying to push in and get a bite of food and then the other chick still to the right of the trunk. Great getting to see the whole family all at once. And, it is easy to see in this photo how light brown Dad is … that is how he got his name … after the chocolate bar.
The bald eagle chick FLEDGED today! I watched him going up and down and up and down from the nest to the branches above the nest. Then he stopped, way up high, looked toward the main lake, quivered, and flew away from the nest. Oh, my!
The bald eagle chick is branching higher! I included a closeup and a full shot so you can see his progress.
Jordan Lake, First Nest: The bald eagle chick at First Nest wants to feed himself, but Dad Petruchio thinks the chick needs some help. Dad puts his foot down and the chick has to wait for Dad’s okay.
One of the chicks has branched. This is a very important exercise for the chick as the next step is to fledge. The chick is standing almost directly behind the big branch at the right edge of the nest. You can see some flickers as the chick decides if it is going to take that next step … up … This is called branching and the eaglets use these small upward flights, above the nest, to get muscled up for flight. Doing these first little leaps, using the nest as a safety net, are very, very important.
doc ellen's journey 