A Fish Dinner is Served

Last year a post focused on a bald eagle nest in a sycamore growing on a steep bank above the Susquehanna River. The post ended with the single chick in the nest having grown to an age where it was almost ready to leave and begin a life in the sky above the river.

This year I returned to the nest on a beautiful spring morning and, instead of standing on the outside of the guiderail above the steep sidehill, stood tight between the guiderail and the road as the traffic swished past. The narrow path on the outside of the guiderail had been posted against trespassing by the landowner; although the path is probably within the road’s right-of-way, I chose to avoid a potential confrontation. Neither spot is a particularly safe place to stand, so I didn’t stay long.

The female eagle was feeding two young chicks a fish dinner, offering each young bird morsels of food. From my spot it wasn’t possible to determine which was the older, more dominant eaglet but my best guess was that the nearest one was the older.

Dinner is served –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When neither eaglet took the final morsel, the adult swallowed it herself.

Last year I didn't get any photographs that showed the adult’s lower leg, so there was no way to determine if it was banded. This year it was obvious the adult was banded, but the numbers couldn’t be read and so there’s no way to tell the bird’s age or origin.

I may return to photograph the eaglets as they grow, but the road’s berm is very narrow and the road is a major thoroughfare so ...

Walking with Wildflowers

In the bottomland along a nearby stream is an area of large older trees, a rich woodland full of sugar maple, red oak and wildflowers. Its deep fertile soils support an abundance of those early spring wildflowers that emerge, flower, set seed and store enough sugars and starches to last them until next spring before the trees’ leaves fully emerge – they're called spring ephemerals.

This is one of those areas well worth walking through; it will be a slow walk, one with much stopping and bending down – and in my case kneeling with camera in hand.

Never have I seen such a profusion of trout-lily as were in bloom in mid-April of this year. In the Big Woods an hour’s walk will take you past tens of thousands of trout-lily leaves with nary a flower to be seen, but here an hour’s walk passes hundreds and hundreds of blooming trout-lily. Enjoy –

Interspersed with the trout lily are scattered Dutchman’s breeches, named for their supposed resemblance to a pair of pantaloons with a yellow waistband –

And then there are the purple trilliums, also known as wakerobin –

Did you notice the ant on the flower in the last photo? Purple trillium are heavily dependent on ants for their reproduction, although this ant is rushing things a bit. Trillium seeds have a sweet coating that’s very attractive to ants which tote the seeds back to their nest. Having eaten the sweet coating, the ants carry the seeds out to the area where they dump soil and waste from their tunnels – and thus the seeds are planted.

If you come to an area like this a day too late you’ll miss the blooming of the bloodroot, which got its name from the bright red fluid exuded from a broken root; you might miss the blooming of bloodroot if you're late, for its flowers last only a day or two –

The earliest of violets also bloom at the same time, the sweet white violet –

The round-leaved yellow violet –

And the great-spurred violet –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  A few days further into spring and a new cohort of wildflowers will be in bloom.

An Evening with Woodies

After an early supper I headed for a shrub wetland where I’d seen signs of recent beaver activity and flushed a pair of wood ducks. This seemed like a spot where there might be a good chance of photographing a beaver in the process of felling a tree, a series of photographs that’s missing from my collection. On a previous mid-day trip to this wetland I’d found a good spot to sit and wait.

So on a beautiful spring evening I set up my folding hunter’s chair, put on my ghillie shirt and facemask, mounted the camera on a monopod and sat back to wait.

It wasn’t long before there was movement out in the water as a pair of coot swam across in front of me –

Shortly thereafter a pair of wood ducks followed almost the same route from one clump of shrubs to another –

The resplendent male and the female in her camo of brown,tan and white –

And then came a muskrat –

Following that parade things quieted down for a while and I kept busy watching an adult bald eagle circling lazily, far off and far above, and the activities of the male red-winged blackbirds as they defended their territories –

And the backs of several very large snapping turtles as they patrolled the wetland in their search for food and occasionally coming up for a breath of air –

As the light dwindled a pair of wood ducks emerged from the thick patch of shrubs to my left and swam 30 feet to my front, feeding on something I couldn’t see –

Then they swam off and out of sight –

  What a fitting end to a beautiful night even if the beavers never appeared.