{"id":36222,"date":"2024-02-02T20:50:01","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T01:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=36222"},"modified":"2024-02-02T20:50:01","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T01:50:01","slug":"a-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2024\/02\/a-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"A trend?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got out and did a little shooting today, by heading down to Jordan lake while the skies were clear and the temperatures reasonable (meaning about 15°c, but a stiff breeze down on the water.) I wasn’t expecting<\/em> anything, though I was hoping, and as it was, things fell someplace in the middle. The skies were empty and quiet, but before too long I spotted a lone bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus<\/em>) manning, uh, birding its sentry post atop a dead tree.<\/p>\n

\"solitary
This was quite some distance off, and the way the lakeshore curved around at this location, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get much closer even if the eagle allowed it, which was unlikely, so I simply waited to see if it set off to do some hunting, which might bring it closer. In the meantime, I followed a cormorant for a few moments – also none too close, and not doing anything of interest, just passing by. But when I turned back to the eagle, it was gone.<\/p>\n

That was mildly frustrating, because the cormorant was a waste of time as it was, and I scanned the skies in all directions, trying to determine where the eagle had gotten to so quickly, knowing that if it decided to cut away from the lake I’d lose it within the trees in moments. But after a minute or so, three eagles reappeared over the trees and began circling among one another, still quite distant.<\/p>\n

\"pair
Only two of them came close enough together to get in the same frame, but those two seemed to remain in close proximity to one another fairly often – sometimes separating by perhaps a hundred meters, but then closing in again. I was wondering if I’d see mating behavior, because it’s about the time of year for it here, but my understanding was that this took place in midair at higher altitudes;<\/strong> my knowledge of eagle behavior is by no means comprehensive, so take that with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

After a short while, the pair (the third having vanished by now) circled around and came in low and deliberately, and I realized they were both coming in to land simultaneously in the tree with the osprey nest that has been featured here so many times before.<\/p>\n

\"pair
It’s not the easiest to see here, but the entire sequence of frames that I took as they came in to land showed both with their mouths wide open, seemingly calling though I heard no sounds from my distance – maybe it was carried away by the wind, but I knew that I hadn’t heard a peep while the entire circling was going on, which is rare in my experience. <\/p>\n

While eagles will take over osprey nests, they’ll inevitably build over top of them because eagles prefer nests at least three times the size. One of the eagles settled onto the nest, while the other picked a branch nearby, so it certainly seemed<\/em> like they were considering this as their new place to raise a family. I would be exceptionally pleased if this were the case, because there are several vantages available, but I also know that this section of the lake is quite busy and I doubt that they’d be happy there. The only other eagle nesting area that I’m aware of is hundreds of meters from any approach by people, and commensurately too far to make photography worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Jordan Lake lies in the approach corridors for the nearby airport, so I was provided a nice little framing opportunity at one point.<\/p>\n

\"pair
This is cropped of course, so I’ll also provide the full frame, to give an idea of what I was seeing – all these have been taken at 600mm.<\/p>\n

\"same
And yes, that’s the same dead tree that the solitary eagle was sitting in when I first arrived, though I was a little further around the curve of the lakeshore at this point and so the relative positions have changed – I’m guesstimating that the dead tree is about 20 meters closer than the nest tree, but that’s only ballpark.<\/p>\n

Little else was going on, and it seemed unlikely that the eagles would head out to do any hunting, so I started winding my way back. Just as I was getting to the point where I’d lose sight of them in the surrounding trees, I noticed that they were now sitting together on the same branch, possibly discussing decorating ideas.<\/p>\n

\"pair
My path back to the car actually took me a lot closer to the nest tree, though it remained out of sight due to the foliage, and as I approached I head a couple of singular chirps from that direction, the first sounds that I’d heard from them, but if this was typical of how they’d been communicating, I’m not surprised that I didn’t hear anything from the much greater distance;<\/strong> these were softer and singular vocalizations, not at all territorial or warning.<\/p>\n

I knew I could get pretty close in underneath the nest<\/a>, but also that the eagles would see me long before I had a clear view of them, not to mention that I didn’t want to spook them if they were considering taking over that nest, so I avoided going any closer and simply headed back home.<\/p>\n

I had unloaded the memory card and was just starting to go through the images I’d obtained when I got a text from my friend at the neighborhood pond, who had spotted the visiting eagle<\/a> cruising around out there again, so I immediately loaded back up and trotted over there. The eagle was nowhere to be seen by that time, having chosen not to find any perches, so I simply did a circuit and took a few frames of opportunity, like these turtles.<\/p>\n

\"trio
Not quite enough detail visible to be sure, but I’m fairly certain these are yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta<\/em>,) both from the habits and because that’s what the pond is full of. They were taking advantage of the sunlight, and I honestly don’t know what it means if a turtle<\/em> sees its shadow today – probably just that it’s sunny out. Or perhaps that we will have six more weeks of weather.<\/p>\n

There was also about six double-crested cormorants (Nannopterum auritum<\/em>) hanging about, but most slid off a little more distant as I approached – the turtles were far less wary of my approach and stayed put the entire time, which is reversed from how it normally is. But I still did a quick portrait.<\/p>\n

\"pair
Just good enough to make out the green eyes of the closest. Both of these last images, by the way, were warmed slightly in post, taken as a cloud passed and thus the light had gone into deeper shade, too blue. I know they don’t look<\/em> warm, but they’re improved over what they originally looked like without getting heavy-handed.<\/p>\n

Anyway, off to an early start with the eagles – we’ll see how this trend pans out for the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got out and did a little shooting today, by heading down to Jordan lake while the skies were clear and the temperatures reasonable (meaning about 15°c, but a stiff breeze down on the water.) I wasn’t expecting anything, though I was hoping, and as it was, things fell someplace in the middle. The skies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[4359,76,4360,3798,6650,7152,2828,169],"class_list":["post-36222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-bald-eagle","tag-double-crested-cormorant","tag-haliaeetus-leucocephalus","tag-jordan-lake","tag-nannopterum-auritum","tag-osprey-nest","tag-trachemys-scripta-scripta","tag-yellow-bellied-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}