Friday’s Feathered Friends- Eagles at the Gate

Posted in Photography

Copyright ©2023 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION!

This pair has been coming to a tree outside our gate off and on for awhile. It’s lovely to see them come back year after year.

I wish I was able to get in a better position to get a branch free shot this day, but I’ll take it!

American Bald Eagle Pair

Wednesday on my way out to run errands the male was in the tree alone, and me without my camera!

Fun Facts:

I have shared many fun facts about the Bald Eagle over the years so I’ll only include a few here today.

Had Benjamin Franklin prevailed, the U.S. emblem might have been the Wild Turkey. In 1784, Franklin disparaged the national bird’s thieving tendencies and its vulnerability to harassment by small birds. “For my own part,” he wrote, “I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. … Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District.”

Sometimes even the national bird has to cut loose. Bald Eagles have been known to play with plastic bottles and other objects pressed into service as toys. One observer witnessed six Bald Eagles passing sticks to each other in midair.

The largest Bald Eagle nest on record, in St. Petersburg, Florida, was 2.9 meters in diameter and 6.1 meters tall. Another famous nest—in Vermilion, Ohio—was shaped like a wine glass and weighed almost two metric tons. It was used for 34 years until the tree blew down.

Fun Facts gleaned from allaboutbirds.org

Today my blog is 13 years old. Thank you all so much for being part of my blogging community, and for the friendships, and conversations we’ve shared. THANK YOU!! 🙏😍

Fuji X-T3| Fuji 100-400mm| PS CC 24.1.0

more to come…

69 thoughts on “Friday’s Feathered Friends- Eagles at the Gate”

  8. Wow! I haven’t seen a pair of Eagles before – great shot Deborah! And fun facts too! I like the one about the eagles passing a game of sticks in the air…how amazing is that!
    And happy blog anniversary! Cheers!

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  10. This was such a great post because I am amazed at how bald eagles have rebounded and come back!
    And so imagining the joy you feel sad you come and go while seeing eagles is amazing to me!
    And I am so glad the turkey is not the National bird
    Blah!
    Also – how cool to imagine them passing sticks mid air

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    1. It would be so cool to see them playing with sticks in the air.
      Once years, and years ago friends and I were on our way up to OR to see the Eagles and we saw a pair doing the mating dance in the air. We stopped, jumped out of the car to photograph and watch it. I was so mesmerized watching them I didn’t shoot it! A friend bumped my elbow and said starting shooting!!! By then it was over. 😂 It’s etched in my brain though.

      Thank you so much, Yvette. 😀

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  19. Happy anniversary for your blog. I don’t know how long I’ve been following, but I remember when #1 Grandson was a tiny tyke.

    I like that picture of the eagles. They look like they’re talking and that maybe they’re aware you’re taking their picture.

    I hope you have a great weekend.

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  22. Congratulations with your 13the blog-anniversary, Deborah! The fun fact about the eagle not being appreciated by Franklin made me smile. I don’t know about the moral standards and courage of the turkey, but somehow I find the bald eagle a more fiercesome symbol then a turkey. (When I was a boy we collected NASA Apollo patches. Apollo 11 depicted a bald eagle hovering above the moons surface with an olive branche in its claws. Heroic! I can’t really imagine that ccould have been a turkey 🙂 ) Anyway, a cool picture you made!

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  23. Happy 13! I’m sure you’ll be thrilled to know that if you convert the thirteenths to repeating decimals you get two sets of six, within each of which the same digits cycle around. Here’s one set:

    1/13 = .076923…
    3/13 = .230769…
    4/13 = .307692…
    9/13 = .692307…
    10/13 = .769230…
    12/13 = .923076…

    While there are probably a lot more birders than numberers in the world, they do share some things. For instance, just as branches often block birds from clear view, mathematical relationships can be obscured, too.

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  24. A great way to highlight your 13-year anniversary, Deborah–with a stately pair of beautiful bald eagles. How utterly thrilling to have them return and breed every year. Thanks for all your lovely photos over the years, day and night photos of great beauty.

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  26. Happy blogging birthday, Deborah. What a treat to see these magnificent birds! I knew that about Ben Franklin’s view of the eagle but all else aside, the turkey just would have the same panache and eating our national bird on Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be cool.

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