March 15, 2020

Well it turned out to be a poor weekend for eagle watching as today followed a similar pattern to yesterday in terms of eagle numbers and the level of activity.

At the morning feeding I counted 6 eagles as I drove on to the field.  It started slowly with very little activity for the first 5 minutes at which point the aerial display began.  Numbers eventually grew to about 20, but it was a slow climb.  When eagles did take to the ground there was a relatively tame show.

One of our visitors showed up at 8:15 thinking the first feeding was 8:30.  He didn't see many eagles but did spot Redneck the coyote sniffing around the main feeding area.  He/she returned later in the first feeding, again entering from the northeast corner.  This time there was a double back once about half way down the field but then there was a traverse across the field until Redneck disappeared behind the central slope line int he field.

Between feedings, one of our regular photographers managed to get closer to Redneck and using her telephoto lens determined that the red around the neck is an injury and not a tracking collar.  The surmise is that the injury was incurred while escaping from a snare.  This bears watching but at present there is no obvious sign that the animal is in distress.

Meanwhile back at eagle watch it was the eagles that did most of the watching.  It was a prolonged period of little activity, although there were periods of excellent flying.  After about 45 minutes this turned into a demonstration of taking food in flight.  After about an hour there was a count of about 30.  The action on the ground was not without interest but there was very little aggression.

I have come to the conclusion that they are overfed and as a result I will reduce the amount of chicken I throw out from 6 buckets to 5 per day.  For now I'll stick with 2 feedings at 9:30 and 11:30, though if the activity level does not improve I will consider dropping back to a single feeding.