I was talking to The Girlfriend while looking out the back windows over the pond, and realized that the bird I’d seen wheeling in the thermals fairly high up didn’t quite look right; I’d been seeing plenty of turkey vultures the past few weeks, but this struck me as wrong. Luckily, the camera and long lens were right there (because of the ducks, and geese, and herons, and so on,) and so I snagged it as I went out the door and focused on the bird, who was trying pretty hard to disappear among the still-bare branches of the cypress trees. The bird got much further away, but then swooped lower and cut back across, eventually passing fairly low right over the rooftop, and I confirmed my suspicions:
Yep, that’s a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus,) second-year juvenile, so last year’s hatchling. Considering that we’ve only seen one in the region so far, an adult circling over downtown in late November, we were quite pleased to see this here. It even gave a couple of soft calls as it passed over, in case there was any doubt.
Now, do we expect this to be a regular occurrence? Not in the slightest; there’s no body of water in the immediate vicinity that would prove to be a decent fishing ground (well, fishing water, I guess – you know what I mean) for eagles, and the pond certainly doesn’t qualify, being perhaps a half-meter deep and unlikely to be housing any kind of fish much beyond minnow size. Still, seeing a juvie this close means breeding grounds can’t be too awful far off – we just have to find them.
[I will note that we went down to Goose Creek State Park last week, the most likely place in my mind to find them, and saw nothing but a couple of cormorants and seagulls. We were only there an hour at midday, though, so it was hardly a thorough investigation.]
Curiously, not one frame of the dozens that I shot as it wheeled shows the head with any clarity; when it was more distant behind the trees, nothing snagged good focus, and when it was closer like seen here, even when I had a nice profile angle, the eagle seemed to have its head cocked watching either above or below it – usually, when their head is turned this way, it’s looking up, but I saw nothing at all in that direction. Still, we were standing on the back deck watching this right overhead (this frame was as it re-emerged from being hidden by the chimney,) so no complaints at all.