A sort of okay day of birding...

We have an unusual bird at RAPTOR....a species that we have only seen and treated 5 times in the past 30 years. While the Saturday volunteers were cleaning, I squeezed in and got a photo:


A Long-eared Owl.
Yes, he looks like a great-horned owl. But he's only half the size. Very cute. And seems to have some head trauma with resulting vision problems. Everyone keep those fingers crossed.
(He's supposed to have ear tufts, but he wasn't interested in showing them to me.)

Now. My day today.
I heard that the Oxbow had a bald eagle nest on some adjacent private property. I wanted to see if I could get a peek (without trespassing!).
I wandered back to an overlook and stopped.
I saw a large dark bird across the lake...hmm. Too mottled to be a vulture. Maybe a juvie bald eagle?
And damn tootin', it was.


And a very large flock (100 + ) of unknown gulls were swirling about. And about 30 crows.

This was very cool. I love eagles and don't get to seem them very often.
It got better. Another juvenile eagle joined the first one.


This is nice. Two eagles at once? I've never seen two at once.



To explain the suckiness of my photos, this is how far away I was:

See that faaaarrrrr shore? The eagles were past that in another lake. I need to start saving my pennies and got a really LONG lens and a new camera.



I scanned with my binoculars in time to see a third juvenile join the first two.

Holy Mackerel. Three. Freakin'. Eagles.
I then scanned the whole shore, and counted at least SEVEN juveniles. SEVEN.

At this point, I was talking to myself....
"Holy s**t. Seven. Seven? Oh, wow.....wait. Oh. OH. OH!!!! Adults!!!!"
Three adults were flying in. That made ten.
TEN. BALD. EAGLES.

Oh, and a pair of Northern Pintails landed in the lake in front of me.

Huh. Cool.


Let's look at the eagles some more.


Here's two of the adults:


I can hear Dave rolling his eyes all the way from Alaska. Baldies are like trash birds up there.
But ten bald eagles in southeastern Indiana....that's just spectacular.
Never did see the nest.
:)

On a totally unrelated note....Kenn Kaufman Friended me on Facebook. Maybe he just is looking for Friends because he's new to Facebook. But you all know that there will be no living with me now. I'm Kenn Kaufman's Friend.
: )

Sadness at the Oxbow

I spent my alone time today at the Oxbow. It rained off and on while I was there, but I was too happy to feel the drops to complain.
The Oxbow is ringed with corn and soybean fields along its west side:

The only good thing about the drought is that the roads in the Oxbow are drivable. In typical years, there are areas that will swallow your car. No joke.

This tree was hollow, but still alive. How do they DO that?
You can see the "old" shoreline in this picture.

And here is the new shoreline. Oxbow Lake is nearly dry.

Check this. Look at my feet...I wear size 8's, and the cracks are nearly big enough to twist an ankle.

Everywhere you look, unionid shells are laid bare. This one has a puddle of rainwater. I have seen these every time I visit the Oxbow, but today was like watching extinction. There is very little water for them to hide in. I read that they can make pearls, but the pearls are chalky and soft.

A flock of black vultures came in and chased off the murder of crows across the way. They wanted the fish and they got it all, too.

Spotted sandpipers, I think.

I really think this was a Baird's sandpiper. They have been spotted here in the past week or so.
I miss my camera. It helps me with ID's. It can focus faster than my binoculars. And I can get better looks at things.

I couldn't walk more than a few feet without encountering a dead fish.

I wasn't aware that hunting was permitted in the Oxbow. That doesn't sound right to me. But the Conservancy's long-term plan include traditional use of the floodplain (hunting, fishing and farming). Oh, well. At least the hunters could pick their shit up, right?

I also saw a worm-eating warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, grackles, blue-winged teals, an unidentified "peep" ( I want it to be a sanderling!), double-crested cormorants, barn swallows, and the usual chickadees, cardinals and of course the very annoying killdeer.


I was happy with the birding today, but I left a bit down. The water level is so low, the big fish (I don't know, carp?) are forced to lay on their sides to get one gill under water to breathe. And the water is still shrinking. We need about a month of rain to get everything back on line.
I wonder how long the effects of this summer will last?