A bit of action from this past winter near my local bald eagle nest and a cool shot for Freedom Friday.

It was a crisp, cold February morning along the South Platte River as I hung out with my favorite pair of eagles. They spent much of the morning at the nest doing some housekeeping and, even took a break to mate for a bit.

When the male departed for a bit, a third eagle arrived at the nest and that set the stage for some excitement. The female began calling to her mate, not happy about the intruder. Soon the male returned and chased off the third eagle. He then went and perched across the river, confident he had taken care of the threat. That, however, was not the case.

The interloper returned, trying to share a perch with the nested male – something this image shows. As you can see, my resident friend was none too happy and raised a huge ruckus. Eventually, the other eagle left and peace was restored.

I am confident this intruding eagle is why the nest ended up failing. I would see the intruder a few more times, always insistent on disturbing the nested pair. This is a scenario that was seen at some other nesting spots here on the Colorado Front Range this past winter – an intruding eagle attempts to take over, causing issues. As their population continues to rebound, these types of things will probably become more common as the eagles fight for territory.

This was a bit of an interesting encounter this past weekend.

I was hiking in to my local bald eagle nest at dawn, just to check on the condition of it and see if the residents were around. Naturally, as I was almost there, I see the eagles flying down the river going to the opposite direction. That is pretty normal as they leave at dawn oftentimes.

I continued on, checked the nest, then worked my way back south toward where they headed. I end up spotting a pair of them on top of a high-tension power pole. It wasn’t a good spot for pics and, as I looked at the pics I was getting, I realized they were not my resident pair – one of these had a darker head, as if it was a bit young.

As I contemplated that and waited for them to hopefully give me some action, I look around and on the very next pole up the line is another pair of eagles! During the depth of winter that wouldn’t be all that unusual but this time of year it is as seasonal visitors haven’t arrived yet.

I checked out this second pair and am pretty sure they were my friends from up river. The two pairs didn’t really do much although it seemed they weren’t happy with each other being so close as they did make a racket, as seen here.

The fact there were two pairs in the same area is very interesting to me. Is there a second nest in the area that I don’t know of? Is one of those in that second pair the one that hassled my favorites this spring and possibly led to the nest failure?