Bald eagle in the bosque!
Yes, as I was walking today on the path along the east side of the clear ditch north of the Río Grande Nature Center about half a mile south of Montaño, at 4:53 PM I saw a bald eagle fly in front of me, maybe 50-100 feet up and perhaps 100 yards off. Big dark bird, white tail, white head - only one bird of I know in North America looks like that. And I just confirmed the identification with the suave Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America
Now, this may be No Big Deal for those in some parts of the country -
moar funny pictures
- but that’s just the second time in my life I’ve knowingly seen a bald eagle in the wild. The first was several years ago, in roughly the same area.
A bald eagle. Now that is condensed awesomeness!
It was a signal day for big birds. When we first crossed the footbridge back to the east side of the clear ditch, we found a boatload of Sandhill cranes in the wildfowl preserve field beyond the fence. Emma usually takes the cranks in stride, as she does the Canada geese, which is a Good Thing - as I often say, if she goes ’round and ’round with one of those, we’re all going to the vet’s.
But today she stopped and alerted on the cranes a couple of times. I suspect it was because there were so many of them, they were so close to the fence, and they’re just so darned huge. Once she looked back at me as if to say, “Dad? Dinosaurs!”
Emma may’ve just been unusually sensitive today, or it may have been an active day for wildlife: a few yards farther along, she started peering intently down into some brush that grew down and out over the water at the base of a tree. There’re plenty of small animals it could’ve been: in that general area I’ve seen muskrat, beaver, porcupine, foxes (okay, a fox), ground squirrels, squirrel squirrels, and coyotes. I just didn’t see anything this time.
There are reasons I like to walk down there.