Notes To My Mother

In spring eagles gather at the Hood Canal in Washington.  What brings them there is a little fished called the Midshipman.  The female Midshipmen lay their eggs in the oyster beds and then leave for the male fish to tend to the eggs.  The problem for the fish is the oyster beds are in shallow water so that when the tide goes out the fish are exposed.  All sorts of birds come to feast on the fish, and among them are lots and lots of eagles. The behavior shown in the two images above is called grappling.  It is a cartwheeling spinning display with talons locked.  I had heard that this was courting behavior, however, according to the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Wildlife Institute, this is aggressive territorial behavior.  In every grappling image I have the eagle on the bottom looks distressed, while the one on top appears very much in control. Here is an image of an eagle with a freshly caught Midshipmen, being tailed by one of the ever p...

                                                                      One of the reasons I love White Tailed Kites Looking up from photographing the coyote (in a previous post) I saw a pair of kites, off in the distance flying close to each other.  I focused my camera on them and began shooting.  It was all happening so fast and the image in the viewfinder was so small I did not fully grasp what I was capturing.  But here it is, a series of pictures with the two adult kites their talons locked together, spinning and falling toward earth.                                    Some people think they are fighting but I think that is unlikely.  They have to maneuver in the air with one of them turning onto its bac...