Bald Eagles 2020

Sweet, I just saw a bald eagle just north of Coldwater last week. Huge bird, unfortunately it flew away before I was able to get a picture.

We've seen 4 or 5 bald eagles (all adult plumage) fly past our place (never close enough to photo though) and one golden eagle up near Grand Bend a couple of weeks ago - looked bigger than the bald eagles we've seen and with a slower flap it seems. No camera at the time though. It's great to see more and more eagles.

I'm not saying it's impossible for one to be around this area, but Golden Eagles are predominantly mountainous birds. It's possible that what you saw was a female (always larger than the male) immature Bald Eagle. They are very similar looking, especially from a distance, and those two species are almost indistinguishable from a distance at that age. They don't get their "adult" plumage (white head and tail) until their 4th or 5th year.

Yes, I agree. The range of goldens do include these parts and I've seen a golden up in Algonquin Park during a canoe trip and much closer than the most recent one, which was much closer than the bald eagles we have been seeing from our place (I guess I wasn't clear about that). The head and body also appeared stockier or kind of stubbier than the balds we have been seeing. The body and flap frequency of this one is what made me think golden rather than a a bald. But you are right, it could have been a a bald that's not in "adult" plummage. Without a photo, I can't review to be positive of course and for sure they are no where as common as bald eagles in our area. I have seen both balds and goldens in BC as well.

Goldies do have a shallower, slower wing beat. They tend to spend more time soaring than flapping their wings. I found this pretty interesting comparison web page to see the difference.
https://www.avianreport.com/how-to-tell-a-j...ile-bald-eagle/
Regardless, they are both magnificent birds. The Goldie that I handled in England had a bad habit of stretching it's right wing and knocking my hat off frequently! I would have loved to go hunting with him, but I was a total rookie falconer at the time and didn't have nearly enough experience to deal with such a huge bird.

We are quite fortunate here in the South Bay area of Lake Nipissing as Bald Eagle and Osprey sightings are very common. There is an eagles nest on an island about a half a km away and an osprey nest within sight with binoculars from the living room windows. That said I do not see the osprey nest building yet this year so I am not sure if they will be back. We do see one flying around daily but no activity at the nest. There have been a couple juvenile eagles hanging around the nest though.

We also have Merlin's that nests in the back. They are noisy but it is fun to watch them fly. They can get some speed going.

Kind of off topic but the hummingbirds are at the northern border of the US and with the weather finally showing signs of warming up they should be back in a week or two. Will have to get the feeders out soon.

Neil

Birds of prey will sometimes have 2 or 3 nest sights that the same pair will use in different years. There's another website that I visit that has one of the nests (most frequently used) with 2 cameras set up, but this year they pair is using the other nest about a quarter mile away.

That site helped and furthers my feelings that what we saw was a golden. My go to guide is the NGS' Field Guide to the Birds of North America - it's a great guide. I've been using this guide since I took a field course in ornithology back in my senior undergrad years and has been very helpful.
Yeah, we are awaiting the humming birds.
Lots of redtailed (the most common we have seen), a sharp-shinned was hunting house sparrows the other day in the bushes (that was really interesting to see and we were able to walk up pretty close to it - didn't bother it at all it was so focused on the sparrows but we didn't see a kill), a couple of ospreys and a rough-legged as well. And turkey vultures like there is no tomorrow - nice to such large birds.

I'm loving it that they're back

As a kid they were my favorite animal and it took me until i was 22 and in BC to see one on the wild.
Last year I saw one on a couple different lakes I fished. It's great to see.

Thanks for the link

Seen a pair of them together on Cameron lake on the weekend . Really glad to see them this often

I was just checking the Decorah nest yesterday. The 3 eaglets are really getting big now!!

"Our" great horned owlets have left the nest. Still catch glimpses of them here and there in different trees but they clearly are able to hop/fly around alot more now. We saw the smaller one try to hop around and fall to the ground one evening and then run about 200m across an open field - looked like a fat turkey waddling across that field (took about 15 min.) but mom and pops were looking over it and calling more or less the whole time until it disappeared into a wooded area (then we left - getting too dark). Next day, we saw it up a tree in that area so it was good to see it made it up the tree. Still saw it hanging around with the bigger owlet in the new tree on our last sighting a couple of days ago. The larger owlet made it to the new tree. Saw a couple more balds and an osprey still hanging around.

Everytime we see the one on buckhorn I tell my family that we need to put montreal steak spice on the cormorants