finding our bald eagle

The summer "to do" list also had "find a Bald Eagle" on it. So I figured now that they are plentiful the task would not be too hard...I have never seen one n the wild and Grace either so we were excited about the adventure. We headed to Montezuma where I read a woman saw 50 different eagles in one day...I figured she put a bunch of flapping fish on the roof of her car and just sat back and watched them come....

We tried just looking....within seconds of being in the park we spotted a low flying raptor type...it was a falcon....not sure which...maybe a perrigrine.or a northern harrier...cool...he dove into the marsh grasses and yanked out a snake or something...so we kept looking....

We saw Herons, grebes, Bitterns, egrets, pipers...wow ...and maybe a sand hill crane(Grace had the brochure so she was calling them pretty good from the back seat )....we did not see anything for certain on the main road...so we headed to Tschashe Pool....just south of the watch tower I tell Grace to watch the dead tree limbs....within a two seconds she screams "DAD...THERE'S ONE!"..I pull over mainly because of the shrill pain in my ear and head from Grace's casual announcement. I look to the west (into the sun) and I see a huge bird just landing on a limb...I squint but I see a line at the neck and I think she is right...that is a bald eagle....stunning bird but light was bad so I tell her....watch him and I pull the car into the next clearing and get the camera gear out...and then he flew off...see him in the pic?

I would say we met our goal but now we are going back to the same pool next time through...morning would be better light.

If you click and look at this one from Tschache Pool you can see hundrds of birds....the blow up is of an immature male bald eagle we tracked for some time but it could be a large harrier maybe.

so we will be back soon to continue this adventure...certainly on a cooler day....