Early last Friday morning we headed north to Green Lane Park, about 20 miles from my home. The Park consists of approximately 3100 acres of woods and fields including three lakes, the largest being the Green Lane Reservoir, 805 acres in size. A Canadian cool front had come in overnight and we were anxious to take advantage of the refreshing weather by doing some hiking in the woods along the Reservoir, and then along a stretch of the Perkiomen Trail that we had not yet hiked. I had hopes of also doing some eagle watching but unless someone could direct me to the vicinity of the eagle nest, that was not going to happen. We needed a map and some info from the Nature Center but they weren't yet open when we arrived so we hiked the nearby Hemlock trail through the woods. We literally ran into at least twenty or thirty spider webs stretched across the path. (I really shouldn't say 'we' because as I wasn't the trailblazer I wasn't the one who was eating webs left and right.) I heard some chickadees and watched some other unfamiliar birds flying around among the tall tree tops. The keeper of the binoculars was blazing the trail up ahead so I never did get a chance to try to try identify the unfamiliar birds with anything other than the naked eye. On this occasion that wasn't enough. I did, however, see a red squirrel which is somewhat of a rarity in this area as they are vastly outnumbered by the common grey squirrels. The last time we had hiked this trail the bug problem had been horrendous. Although I was prepared with repellent, this time the bugs were not a factor.
We also lucked out by finding the naturalist at the Nature Center and not out guiding a group or teaching a class in some other location. I told him I was interested in the seeing the Bald Eagles who were nesting in the park. (He probably thought I knew more about them than I did because I later found out there had been some recent media coverage that I had missed.) He supplied me with a map, some information about Bald Eagles and Ospreys, and then gave excellent directions to get to a site that was directly across the reservoir to the deep woods nesting site of the eagles.
Although it is believed that eagles first came to the park in 1998, there were several years of nesting failures, probably due to parental inexperience. Last year started out well, but two men entered a restricted area on ATVs and disturbed the parent eagles who fled. Although It was unclear whether the nest contained just eggs, or whether the birds had hatched, whatever there had been was destroyed by crows that were seen on the nest the next day.
Because of last year's incident, not much was said about this season's eagle nesting, at least not until recently. So far everything is looking good as the first eaglet fledged on June 24th with two more fledging within the next two days. That in itself is pretty amazing as there is statistically only a 10 percent chance that Bald Eagles in Pennsylvania will successfully raise three fledglings. What makes this nesting even more special is the fact that there is no documentation of any successful bald eagle fledgings in Montgomery County in more than a century (114 years to be exact)!
We followed the naturalist's directions and were soon setting up our chairs and settling in to do some serious bird watching. Although it would have been missed without a pair of binoculars, I soon was focusing the binoculars on the nest across the lake. But that was about it. I could see the nest, but nothing else was visible for the next half hour. With the binoculars all but glued to my face, my patience was finally rewarded when one of the majestic parent eagles flew in to the nesting site with a fish. I was so thankful that I had the binocs up when this occurred or I'm likely to have missed it all. At this point I was still unable to see the eaglets, though, as their coloration blended in too well with the background or they were too far down in the nest, estimated to be about 4 feet deep and 6 feet wide.
Anyway, after a while I watched the adult fly off and during that time period enough sunlight shone through the trees that I was able to see one of the eaglets flapping its wings. About 20 minutes later the adult returned, this time circling around and coming in to the nest from a different direction. I couldn't tell what it was carrying this time (if anything), but I suspect it may have been another fish. The parent eagle stayed on the nest edge for about ten minutes then moved to a branch near the nest, but outside it, and positioned itself there for a long period of time. He or she was still on that branch when we left. Although I've got a pretty decent pair of binoculars, I was wishing that I had a spotting scope and a tripod so that I might have seen just a little more action in the tree-shaded nest. Thank goodness that the adult eagles have those bright white feathers which make it so much easier to spot them.
Although this year's eagle fledging is the first for the county in a century, it's also a first for me as I've
never seen an eagle's nest before, and the only eagles I have ever seen have been in wildlife rehab centers or in migration over Hawk Mountain or Cape May Point.... never in residence with a family.
Leequi <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
