This report about American Bald Eagles with 10 pages and 30+ photos from 6 different states
was put together as a casual by-product of many a year of Birding. Today, as conservation
efforts have succeeded, Bald Eagles have become fairly common and are no longer on the
Endangered Species list. After observing an eagle pair nest at a distance of +/-50 yards from
a popular ice cream stop along a tourist town's main street in Florida, I also have taken them
off my priority list. Now, why would a pair of America's Birds establish a nest adjacent to a
busy parking lot..? Simple. First came the developers and bulldozers. After most of the dense forests had been razed to make way for housing, malls and cars, after all that, hurricanes
took down what had become easy targets. Therefore, with choices gone, eagles now nest in
the very few tall trees left standing. Sure, there are a few images I'd like to get, but I'm not
striving after them. If they come about, they come about. And I certainly would like to be able to
capture more of the exciting Rumble-Tumble kind of action with my current digital equipment
which can result in much cleaner and sharper images like the one on top (from 2009).
This partner of the nest mentioned above, practically ignored about a dozen or so spectators
snap-shooting from less than 20 yards away. In many cases a Bald Eagle on a perch
will just take off at the approach of a curious human, careful as one might be.
And so it happened in the photo below one winter day in early 2000 somewhere close to
the Illinois River not too far from Ellis Bay where I got to do the American Kestrel story
a few months later...