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?
