I mean, it's pretty far away, but it's also pretty obvious that this is a BIG, black bird with very white head and tail feathers. We've been seeing him in the same couple mile stretch of Highway 99 between Biggs and Oroville, just before Highway 162, heading north toward Chico, for those bird-watching geography geeks amongst us. He's big--but a couple of times we've seen what we think is a smaller bird, which makes me think we might have a pair (logically enough, this would be Martha), and if we got a pair, and they stayed for nesting season........oooooh.....
Anyway, this was the high point of this morning's trek to Paradise for nuking. All nuked, and now I am on "vacation" until tomorrow's nuking, which isn't until 2:30. That means a 1:30 departure, which means I have nearly an entire 24 hours to do whatever I want.
So, I'm going to go do whatever I want now.
Later.
2 comments:
George is very cool. *g*
After all the traveling I've done in the midwest and the east coast, I've still never seen a bald eagle in the wild. I'm very jealous. :)
Love you
Mom
The first time I saw one in the wild (such is the "wild" of "next to highway 99 near Chico") I thought I was hallucinating, because I figured we really didn't have such creatures. You find those way up in the mountains of other states, right?
Wrong!
Once I found out that they were for real, I started watching with a rather scary devotion, and had another 2 sightings last season.
We figured out, with some help from our neighbors (a hunter who knows this area well & a US Fish & Wildlife dude) that the eagles don't stay down here in the valley for much of the year. We have 'em from, say, late November-ish until maybe early March-ish, and then they head back up higher into the mountains.
So, this is primetime! We started watching in the late fall, and were rewarded with George (or a friend of his) on a couple minor sightings--minor meaning, we saw enough to ID the bird, but not close enough or for long enough to give that "ooooooh" factor.
It's only been the last month or so that we've been seeing George & maybe Martha alongside 99 in one specific section. It's a pretty short section of road, and it's distinct, in that it's between two stoplights--the only two stoplights between here and Chico. On the east side of the road for a large part of that stretch is part of the Lake Oroville forebay or afterbay, (I never remember which) meaning lots of fishies, and on the west side is mostly flooded rice fields.
The flooded fields are usually full of ducks, geese and tundra swans (pretty damned impressive in their own right!), but when the eagles are about, the duckies are not. Our friend told us that they all pretty well ignore the hawks, and the swans are so big they don't care, but that when an eagle comes around, the ducks disappear, because the eagles will just cruise along and pluck up a duck or two for fun. So, ducks in field = no George.
We've seen George flying on the east, up over the levee, and many times sitting on the ground on the west, like in the picture. I never imagined I'd see a bald eagle sitting on the ground all the time, but I guess he's pretty predator-free and confident. I don't know, you just picture eagles sitting majestically up in a tree or on a cliff, not plopped in a rice field...but he's still pretty majestic.
The other day, he was flying, pretty low, cruising right above the fenceline on the west side of the highway, keeping almost perfect pace with me! I couldn't believe how close he was to me. I was actually yelling inside my car because I was so hyper about it. But, it really is literally "awe-inspiring," in the TRUE sense of the term, and until you've seen it, it's hard to explain.
I mean, it's a freakin' bald eagle! When I was a kid, these things were so endangered, I figured they'd be extinct before I grew up, and now I see them by the side of the road ten minutes from my house. TEN MINUTES!!
Sorry all...my mother turned me into a bird-geek somewhere along the twisted road of my strange childhood.
We're taking the 10x optical zoom camera and putting it in the car today. The one I used for these pics was only a 3x optical with an additional 5x digital, so if I find him at a similar distance, the results should be much, much more distinct and cool. :-D
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