Bald Eagle Update

Adult Bald Eagle with chicks (Audubon image)

Yesterday (November 11, 2015), one of my organization's members observed "our" two adult Bald Eagles mating - three times!  Of course, there's no guarantee that the birds will attempt to nest in my preserve again this winter, but it's a good indication that they might.

After last year's pair of eaglets fledged on June 16, 2015, we occasionally observed the adults and the immature birds throughout the spring and summer.  The fact that they stayed in the area was another good indication of their intent to attempt to nest again, but we couldn't be sure.  After all, Bald Eagles nested at the mouth of my creek along the Delaware River for several years and then abandoned that location, so they could have done the same here in the preserve.

Now, we just have to make sure that we have a sufficient number of roadkilled deer to sustain them through the winter.  Fortunately for the eagles, but unfortunately for the staff and the deer, retrieving enough roadkilled deer is not usually a problem.

Wounded

The president of my board of directors - a man I respect, admire and count as a friend - asked me to prepare a photo essay of 10 properties located adjacent to my natural area preserve that our land trust could potentially acquire for conservation in the future should money become available.  He wanted me to prepare the essay for presentation at a board meeting.  His "simple" request touched off two weeks of intensive work during which I had to photograph the properties and then prepare a PowerPoint presentation of my findings.  (My board president was very satisfied with the result.)

Our natural area preserve is embedded in a very suburbanized landscape.  The protected area is bounded by a network of old, narrow colonial-era roads, some of which bear a lot of traffic.  In a few instances I felt like I was taking my life in my hands as I stood on the verge of a road during rush hour (the light was best at that time of day) taking a picture with semis roaring by at 45 mph a few feet away.

Some of the roads were less heavily traveled, though, and I could be more leisurely with my photography.  On one of these roads, as I was nearing the end of my photo shoot, I looked down and saw a small garter snake coiled up at the edge of the pavement.  I nudged the snake but it didn't move; it was stiff, attracting flies and clearly dead.  But it wasn't obviously squashed.  I didn't straighten out its lifeless body, but I suspect that it had been mortally injured by a passing vehicle and had coiled into this incredibly tight ball in its death throes.

I drive this road frequently, and it just as easily could have been my car that dealt the fatal blow as any other.  I imagined this snake's misery as it died as reflected in its final configuration and was overwhelmed by sadness.

An Unjust Death

Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) Image by Cary Maures

Late this afternoon (February 16), one of my employees brought a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) that had just been struck and killed by a car to the office. Not 30 minutes earlier, the employee had seen the hawk circling in search of food over a grassy field and, in fact, the mangled bird was still holding a vole that it had captured in its tallon. What an incredibly depresing sceanario. While there are plenty of Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) around, this was the only Red-shouldered Hawk we had seen in quite a while and we'd been watching it for the last several weeks.