I posted about how I missed the first Bald Eagle event (Jan 14th) at Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, St Louis, when it got cancelled due to the ice storm. I then waited eagerly for a week, and we went to Alton, Illinois, on Jan 22nd to see the eagles in their riverine habitat. We had to stand about mile away to see them, standing in the freezing cold, turning an enraptured blue….

And then, today, I get an email from my son-in-law’s mom in Portland, Maine, which goes as follows:

“I was just getting out of the shower when the phone rang and it was Laurie Jensen next door asking what kind of bird that was in one of our birches, devouring a duck. Take a look!”

A bald eagle had caught a duck, and was sitting in the birches on the edge of her front lawn, eating it!

She is not a wildlife photographer…but she rushed for a camera, and though it was low light, she took a few hurried shots…here they are. These birch trees are on her lawn, which faces the Atlantic…they are about 50 ft from her window….here the photos are:

The eagle stops to look directly into the lens…with the kind of vision it has, the bird probably took in every detail of LS’ home, camera, even the number of her eyelashes (eagles would be able to read fine newsprint across the length of a football field)….

Having decided that the photographer is not a threat, the bird then stoops back to its meal (it’s a duck that the eagle has caught)

And the meal then proceeds….

I sat at those same windows in that house for 4 days…of course the bald eagle did not visit until de Ponti Murphy left and had taken a lot of trouble to see its brothers and sisters elsewhere!