Yesterday I was looking out our kitchen window at the park land that lies behind our house and saw a really large bird in one of the huge cottonwood trees that call the park home. It was larger than the usual Bald Eagles we see sitting in the trees so I grabbed the binocs to take a peek and sure enough it was a Golden Eagle. By the time I got the camera it had flown. The big bird was just back in that tree. I set the coffee cup down to come get the camera and just like that a mess of crows, ducks and geese flushed off the river and spooked the eagle so no picture again. Camera will be on the counter now.
Local Bald Eagles are a daily siting and while I wouldn’t call a Golden Eagle siting common, they haven’t really been rare either in the last couple years. I know there are at least three breeding pairs along the Mississippi and in the Whitewater Valley and I think they manage to get over this way when things lock up in the cold over that way. Golden Eagles are not carrion eaters like the Bald Eagles and there are tons of geese and ducks here that hang out on the open water of the river here so this becomes a food source for them. I think, like all things during these bitter cold periods, that the Golden Eagles have to cover way more area to find food, hence the presence here.
I never realized how large the Goldens are until I saw a Golden and a Bald Eagle sitting in the cottonwoods at the same time last year. The Golden is easily a third larger than a Bald Eagle. The wing spans are enormous. And when a Golden Eagle catches sunlight in flight it is a beautiful bird to behold. I just looked again and its in flight over the water. If it settles in the tree again I’ll try for a picture. Maybe the guys that live along the river have seen these big suckers, but for me this is just a treat to have them hanging around.
