Last Day … Best Day?

This was my last day on the water with the eagles and after a morning with nothing, the afternoon was fabulous!  We had some wicked fierce winds today which made the boat rides out and back better than any roller coaster I’ve ever ridden.  But what it did was give the birds plenty of wind under their wings making for some great opportunities with them just hanging in the air.  We also had as many as 9 or 10 at any one time circling the boats.

We had more juveniles in our group today than we had all week.  As you can see, they don’t have their traditional bald eagle markings yet.  The dark wings and the white head and tail of the adults.  It takes the young ones about four years to mature into what we all think of as a bald eagle.

It was a little more tricky today with the high winds whipping up those waves.  Sometimes you just have to sit right in the water to get anything to eat.

This is how the big boys do it, it just takes years of practice.

That’s what it’s all about!  What beautiful birds and beautiful country!

The gulls did provide a bit of comic relief.  In reality, they can be as much fun to watch and photograph as the eagles.  Especially when they act up like these two.

So that ends a wonderful adventure.  Heading home tomorrow but that just means I’ll have more time to work through all these files from the trip.  Believe me when I tell you this is just a tiny portion.  Once home I will put together a gallery of eagle images as well as a few more posts about some of the other parts of our trip.  So, stay tuned, it ain’t over yet!!

As always, you can click on the images to make them bigger