Eagles in the Valley

The eagle must have seen me coming from his perch high atop the telephone post. She lifted her large brown wings, spread wide, and within an instant was flying in the air with something large and red grasped within her talons. As I drove past, I turned and twisted my back to look behind me and I could see the large bird flying against the blue sky. When I saw that she had circled around and was now returning to the top of the same post, I also turned around and slowly approached the direction I came.

The temperament of the eagles were now baffling me. Just an hour earlier I had approached another bald eagle in a tree alongside the highway and it allowed me time to take many pictures from my car. Then I pulled up closer and took more photographs with my window rolled down and parked at a crooked angle to get the best view from the driver's side of the car. The bird never flushed and I finally left when I was satisfied.

But this second bird wasn't as tame. I fumbled with my camera, turning it on and placing it conveniently on my lap. The eagle had returned to her perch and the large red item now appeared to be clutched in her mouth. It was the bloody entrails of a jackrabbit. I approached a comfortable distance to the pole and drifted slowly to the side of the road where I began to raise my camera before the car was even stopped.

She took off again. This time, the long limp intestine fell from her mouth and draped itself over the telephone wire. The bald eagle flew far away this time and I watched as her large brown body shrank into a miniature speck. I could still see her wings flap up and down until finally I could perceive no such detail.

I pulled out my binoculars and dialed the focal ring until the bird came into clear vision. She was there alright. Her white head showed majestically, even at this great distance, as she rested on her new telephone post. No one would bother her there as it was well off the highway. With her keen vision, I'm sure that she watched my every move and was waiting for me to leave. Even though I didn't get the picture I wanted, it was still exciting to watch an eagle in action.

I live in a valley in the Great Basin. Every year, about 50 to 60 bald eagles fly to our area to live during the winter. They fly from regions as far north as Canada.

There was a time about twelve years ago when I would drive around the valley looking for eagles. Since then, the rat-race of life has caused me to abandon this hobby. And since that time, a lot of new homes have been built in the valley and I worried that perhaps the eagles were no longer coming here. I hadn't seen one in years, and I knew that the old road where I once went was now a subdivision.

A conversation with a friend made me rethink the idea of searching for eagles. On his days-off, he would drive down the highway beyond my house and toward the lowest part of the valley to a place called Rush Lake. He said that he usually saw one or two bald eagles there and once he even saw a brood of them scattered throughout a group of cottonwood trees.

So, the quest began. On each of my days-off, I selected a different section of the valley and trolled around in search of eagles. Within five minutes on my first morning, I was rewarded with a bald eagle perched near the top of a tree at the end of a dead-end graveled lane. He watched me from a safe distance as I stepped from my car and got a leaner on a fence post.

Birds are tough animals to get good pictures – especially for an amateur like me with nothing fancy for a camera. Although eagles are much larger than other birds, they are still small compared to other animals. Couple that with the safe distance that they usually keep, and getting a good, crisp photo is hard to come by.

After seeing my first eagle, I continued my drive along many of the back-roads, some which I had never traveled before. I saw abandoned cabins, knarled old trees, pigeons, sparrows, crows, and ravens.

I found a second bald eagle, but it was further away than the first. It perched in an old cottonwood, about three-quarters up the tree. A tag-along crow sat upon the branch just above it.

For the next two months, this would be my routine. Once a week, on my day-off, I would drive in a general direction in the valley during the morning. I would also bring my camera with me to work, in case I saw something on my way home. But I learned that mornings were much more fruitful. I also began to learn which areas of the valley had the eagles, and which didn't.  My heightened alertness allowed me to spot other birds also.

One evening as I drove home, the sun drew near the western horizon and cast an intense golden hue on the fields and the fences and the barns. Atop a telephone post I spotted a red-tailed hawk, the plumage on her shoulders a dark brown, and a near rectangular crimson tail draped below. She watched me closely with her wide golden eyes, turning her head occasionally to look the other way.

After several minutes, she spread her wings and her crimson tail now spread like a fan and I saw the white speckled feathers that had been hidden on her underside. She took off quickly into the air and quickly became a silhouette against the setting sun.

Red-Tailed Hawk

What magical times these moments were! Although I drove around intending to search for these birds, every time I would find one, it was in an unexpected location and I felt a reverence in just being in the same vicinity as such majestic birds. They say a Golden Eagle can spot a jackrabbit up to five miles away! When they dive through the air, swooping down on their prey, they can move up to 175 miles per hour!

I didn't know exactly when the winter ended for the Bald Eagles, and I was worried that they would soon return to their breeding grounds in Canada. The month of February was coming to an end and my plans of roaming the valley were reaching their terminus.

My daughter, Kaitlyn, had passed her written test for Hunter's Saftey, and was now required to take the field test at the shooting range. We drove west of town to the backside of Three Peaks and turned off the pavement and crossed the railroad tracks. The sun lifted gently over Cedar Mountain and cast an early morning glow onto the sagebrush. To the left of the road stood a large decrepit tree, standing tall and alone. Perched on the tallest branch of the tree, a bald eagle.

We stopped for a moment and watched in awe as the bird watched us, her shoulders high, and the feathers on her white head ruffling in the breeze. Although I brought my camera, we had no time to stay and had to travel on.

After two hours of Annie Oakley shooting by Kaitlyn, we once again passed the decrepit tree. No bald eagle. I was very disappointed, but not surprised.

Instead of turning toward town, I turned right and drove in the direction of the Antelope Springs. We weren't far into the drive when Kaitlyn spotted the bald eagle over a carcass with a flock of crows. I hoped that they would be preoccupied with their breakfast to allow me to take pictures, but they quickly flew off to the west.

Golden Eagle

When taking pictures of wildlife, it can be a delicate balance between getting close enough, and not so close that you scare away your quarry. You don't want to harass the subject, but often I worry that I am doing just that. An ideal situation would be to let them come to you, but that doesn't happen very often.

So, I go after them. We turned west onto a dirt road. I wasn't expecting to see the eagle again. But there she was, perched proudly atop a perfectly rounded juniper tree. Once again, she didn't give me the opportunity to get my camera out, and she flushed. She returned to the east, but I couldn't tell exactly where she went.

We found a spot on the dirt road to turn around. We were ready to give up and call it a day. Our drive brought us back to the pavement and we drove as if returning home.

But, the day was not over. The eagle had returned to the carcass. I held my camera in my right hand while I steered with the left and slowly pulled to the shoulder of the road. Of course, she quickly took off.

Although frustrated with the missed opportunities for photographs, I was pleased with the experience. Watching an eagle fly through the sagebrush and land on trees and carcasses was much more intriguing than watching them on telephone poles. 

When I came to the junction with the graveled road, I pulled onto it one last time to check the decrepit tree. From a safe distance, I pulled our vehicle to the side of the road and shut off the ignition.

There she was. The bald eagle perched on the back side of the tree this time. A branch inconveniently blocked an otherwise perfect view of the bird. On the near side of the tree perched a juvenile eagle.  The younger bald eagles don't have the white head yet, and they look similar to a golden eagle.  My guess is that this bird was the off-spring of the other.

Both of them stood still, not seeming to be bothered that we were there. I didn't bother taking pictures of the bald eagle. I had many others, and with the branch in the way, this one would be no better. She seem contented in the wind. This was her home during the winter and I wondered if she came to the same place every year.

Finally, she flushed, but she didn't leave for another area like they usually did. Instead, she flew high above the tree and began soaring in large circles over-head. I saw the large span of her brown wings and the white tip of her head and the white of her tail-feathers. As she circled higher and higher, the outline of her body became smaller and smaller against the perfect blueness of the February sky. The glow of the sun seemed to show a slight transparency of her body, giving away the lightness of her frame.

I decided to drive closer to the tree and take my chance on photographing the juvenile eagle. I snapped a few shots from the drivers-side window. The bird perched at the crook between two branches and the color of her feathers almost camouflaged her with the pebble-colored texture of the bark.

Juvenile Eagle 

I then screwed my camera onto a mono-pod and stepped outside the vehicle. I tip-toed down the embankment of the road and across a ground of sticks and leaves to a good clump of sagebrush. I knew that the eagle knew that I was there, but I still felt it wise to conceal myself partially behind the brush.

The eagle didn't fly away, but only moved her head from side to side. This was the closest that I had ever been to an eagle in the wild, now standing approximately at a forty-five degree angle below her. I took my feel of pictures and finally decided to let her alone.

I returned to my vehicle and drove toward town, leaving behind the decrepit tree. The soaring bald eagle was now out of sight and I knew that soon she would be flying to her home in Canada. What kind of things would she see on that fly home!