BALD EAGLE GALLERY
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

eBird provides this description of the Bald Eagle:  Majestic adults have blackish-brown body with white head and tail. Several stages of immature plumages aren’t quite as majestic, from fully dark brown to messy and mottled with large patches of white. Look especially for white mottling on the belly on immatures. Scavenges and hunts near bodies of water. Soars with wings flat, like a large, dark plank. Head appears large in flight; projects far in front of wings. Surprisingly weak-sounding vocalization is a series of high-pitched whistles.

I am embarrassed by the quality of the photos in this gallery but my goal is to take some better ones in the near future.  It may take a while because it is not every day that you see the majestic bald eagle in the wild and have the ability to take a photograph!  These original photos were taken at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.  The birds and their nest were located very far from the road and swampy conditions did not permit Dorothy and I to get any closer.  As you can see, the distance was just too great for my 300 mm lens hand held.  But, for the time being, here is what I have for this gallery.

In this shot you can see one eagle to the left of the nest.
Here you can see the silhouette of a second bald eagle in the nest, as well as the one to the left of the nest.

Some “Cool Facts” About Bald Eagles From All About Birds…

  • Rather than do their own fishing, Bald Eagles often go after other creatures’ catches. A Bald Eagle will harass a hunting Osprey until the smaller raptor drops its prey in midair, where the eagle swoops it up. A Bald Eagle may even snatch a fish directly out of an Osprey’s talons. Fishing mammals (even people sometimes) can also lose prey to Bald Eagle piracy. 
  • Had Benjamin Franklin prevailed, the U.S. emblem might have been the Wild Turkey. In 1784, Franklin disparaged the national bird’s thieving tendencies and its vulnerability to harassment by small birds. “For my own part,” he wrote, “I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. … Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District.”
  • Sometimes even the national bird has to cut loose. Bald Eagles have been known to play with plastic bottles and other objects pressed into service as toys. One observer witnessed six Bald Eagles passing sticks to each other in midair.
  • The largest Bald Eagle nest on record, in St. Petersburg, Florida, was 2.9 meters in diameter and 6.1 meters tall. Another famous nest—in Vermilion, Ohio—was shaped like a wine glass and weighed almost two metric tons. It was used for 34 years until the tree blew down.
  • Immature Bald Eagles spend the first four years of their lives in nomadic exploration of vast territories and can fly hundreds of miles per day. Some young birds from Florida have wandered north as far as Michigan, and birds from California have reached Alaska.
  • Bald Eagles occasionally hunt cooperatively, with one individual flushing prey towards another.
  • Bald Eagles can live a long time. The oldest recorded bird in the wild was at least 38 years old when it was hit and killed by a car in New York in 2015. It had been banded in the same state in 1977.