This morning has been absolutely miserable, pouring rain and cold…
bundled up in all our rain gear and set out – only to have it stop raining within a few minutes of leaving home….not that I’m complaining! but because it had been so wet, I hadn’t brought binoculars with me and only had the small camera…
so of course this was a day when as soon as we got near the path, we could hear shorebirds….lots of shorebirds….but all out on the ‘flats’
did my usual ‘when in doubt point the camera and shoot’ and have just gone over about a dozen pictures like the one above and zoomed in as far as I can go, still can’t make out one single shorebird…so what they were is anybodies guess! It is early yet for shorebirds so they were probably Killdeer (if so there were a lot of them), or possibly Dunlin. This is where the ability to ‘bird by ear’ would come in handy!
apart from the calling shorebirds, it was very quiet, some Robins and Red-wing Blackbirds heard in the distance.
Went back to the viewing platform in hopes of being able to spot the still calling shorebirds….the one Bald Eagle had been perched in the eagle tree the whole time and was then joined by the second one…
about this point a Sharp-shin Hawk flew over and there were no more shorebird calls..
suddenly there were calls from the pair of eagles….
we have proof – as I suspected – they are definitely a breeding pair! The question now is….where is the nest?
after putting feathers back in order I had hoped one of them would fly off – hopefully in the direction of the nest…but no one moved. I suspect it must be up on the hillside to the west of the estuary but I really have no idea – I haven’t seen any nest building activity, such as branches being carried…
heading for home saw the little flock of Buffleheads…there were also about a dozen Green-wing Teal in the same general area. Not one single Mallard to be seen anywhere!
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