Jordan Lake: Sometimes I admit that I wish I could read a Bald Eagle‘s mind. For instance, this two-year-old bald eagle, this morning, looked at me as if I were some how or other an odd object on the shoreline. I am certain this youngster has seen humans before! But, I did wonder what she was thinking about…
Here is a prime example of my father‘s favorite kind of temperature gauge. I photographed this red shouldered hawk yesterday morning when the wind chill factor was 35°F. Even if I had been sitting in my warm truck, I could have glanced over at this hawk and known that because he is almost as big around as he is tall … the air is cold. He has all of his feathers fluffed up as a nice warm blanket. Also note that he’s got his body lowered so that his feather blanket is mostly covering his feet … just like our warm winter slippers would do.
Jordan Lake: Pied-billed grebes are a winter visitor here. They come down and spend the colder months with us. What I find really neat about the pied-billed grebe is, that like all grebes, it has feet where each toe has a lobe surrounding it. These lobes make the foot look like a tree leaf as you can see here in this photo. This makes the little grebe a very fast underwater swimmer as it dashes about catching fish and crustaceans for its food. I always smile when I see these grebes because they sure look like they are shyly smiling at the world.
Jordan Lake: Kate and Petruchio, like all bald eagle mated couples, go through the rituals of courtship every year as a way to affirm their relationship. Here you can see Petruchio (closest to you) and next to him is Kate. They are talking loudly to each other… bald eagles love to chatter! Also note that Kate (as is true of all bald eagle females) is much larger than Petruchio. This is the beginning of this year‘s courtship. I surely hope that I can catch more of the sequence to share, but, only time will tell us that…
Jordan Lake: The fledgling osprey had worked hard most of the morning trying to catch a fish. The bald eagle had been watching. The osprey got her fish and the eagle wanted it. The chase was on…
Jordan Lake: this female Fledgling Osprey jumped from her perch high in a tree on one side of the cove. She was dashing straight across to the other side. Then abruptly the youngster threw on her air brakes, wrapped her wings around herself and looked over her shoulder, hard, down to the lake below. There the dancer hung for a long heartbeat. Then the osprey shrugged as if well nothing there after all and she turned her head back forward. Unwrapped her feathered wings cape and finished her flight to the other side. A true sky ballerina.
doc ellen's journey 