Fly Like an Eagle
Tuesday bird blogging?
A quick drive up the road and down toward the beach with the dog, and there, sitting just a few feet from the old split rail fence at the top of the bluff, is a huge bird. Dude, quick! Turn the car around, I say to Chopper, and he does, and I scramble to get my camera ready and within a minute we’re parked and I’m stealthily climbing out — or rather, I’m klutzedly attempting to climb out and set the camera’s exposure at the same time.
And the bird, which I now realize is a Golden Eagle, looks at me from about 20 feet away and then takes off. So I point and click and am completely amazed that I managed to get the entire bird in the frame. (So many times I have tried this and failed.)
Needless to say, the beach jaunt that followed was a bit anti-climactic. Leaping dolphins might have helped, you know.
But of course now I’ve got that Steve Miller song stuck in my head and I keep thinking about the opening lines and wondering if it’s something mystical or if it’s just about looking at the calendar and saying Holy Crap, it’s halfway through March, already? Why the HELL does time keep on slipping, slipping into the future?
We’re edging toward tourist season faster than we’d like, and we’re definitely not ready for it. Oh, sure, there’s a plus side. Soon we’ll be adding hours upon hours to our daily work schedules and soon, like so many islanders, we’ll be busting ass to make up for the lean winter months. Bills will get paid, but our leisure time — our time to putter in the garden or play in the kitchen; our blogging time — will dwindle to tiny portions.
Last summer — our first summer here and our first summer of blogging — we struggled and stumbled and I never quite found the balance that allowed me the unexhausted hours I needed to write with frequency or joy. This year, I’m hoping — no, make that striving — to avoid a repeat performance.
In fact, I’ve got nefarious plans in place for that very purpose. Well, almost in place. Providing I can get anything done before tourist season kicks in.
What was that?
I’m working extra hours this week? Already?
Damn.
March 15th, 2006 at 6:54 am
Miz D,
I hope you got a signed release from that bird before posting its picture on the Web. Judging from your first shot (which is stunning) I sure wouldn’t want it mad at me.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:14 am
That blur action on the wingtips!!!!! OMG.
March 15th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Kevin: I didn’t. I’m doomed, aren’t I? Perhaps I should pick a different beach for the pooch next time. That, or I wear a helmet, just in case.
CC: I know! I really owe that bird a debt of gratitude for whatevertheheck it was doing with its wingtips at that moment. (I hope it knows I’m grateful, despite the whole, um, lack of release thing.)
March 15th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Amazing! We were watching a red-shouldered hawk circle over us week before last, but this is just gorgeous. I imagine it was awe-inspiring to be so close.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:01 am
Sweet picture. *applause*
I love living out here where we can watch eagles (mostly bald), heron and other gorgeous birds. One summer we got to watch the eagles teach their babies to fly in the thermals off Saratoga Passage at eye-level from our cliff-top house. Sadly it was in the pre-good camera days.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
It was, Tricia. I was rather in shock to get that close!
Ktchenmage: Most of the eagles around here are bald, so this encounter was surprising. We’ve got a nest of bald eagles up the road from us, but I’ve never gotten to watch babies learn to fly on thermals off a cliffside. On the contrary, a few years back I was up for a visit and two eglets had been tossed from their nest by their parents (the typical learn-to-fly-or-else tactic) and the poor things just sat on their respective fir branches for days on end. They were really rather timid; not at all like the songbirds around here who fall out of their nests and fly, pronto. After a while, it was almost comic, walking up the road, seeing the eglets yet again. Little crowds of park regulars would gather. Some days, I almost expected us to start chanting. Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! You can do it! Come on, Try! Poor silly birds. Took them ages, but they did finally manage.
March 17th, 2006 at 5:33 am
Great pictures! You got the focus on the first one dead center on the bird with the wings just slightly out of focus, way cool. And the second one looks great with the water in the background. It’s really well centered.
March 18th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
That picture is absolutely fantastic. I’m so impressed. And good luck getting through the summer with some semblance of sanity!
March 18th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Hi Mrs. D
I can’t seem to figure out how to leave comments on posts in your archives (or perhaps you’ve disabled them: “get over it people, I’m done with that already!”) but I just had to tell you two things:
I loved the photos on your Irish soda bread post. I’m obsessed with the stuff (second post on it yesterday) and yours is gorgeous.
Also: I was reduced to tears while laughing at your messy kitchen post and the comments that followed. So funny! My kitchen was perfectly clean, until I started cooking in it…
Keep up the great work, you’ve got a fan in San Francisco (with a somewhat cluttered kitchen of her own).
March 18th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Thanks, Barbara & Lady Amalthea! Barbara, I’d love to take credit for a well-centered second photo, but actually it was just well-cropped! Lady A: I need all the luck I can get. The tourists are arriving already… packs of bicycles everywhere!
Hey Tea! I did disable almost all of the comments sections on old posts because I was getting absolutely slammed with comment spam. I am in the process (a very slooooow process) of redesigning the site for Wordpress, and when I do that, I’m hoping I’ll be able to impliment some plug-ins that’ll help with the spam problem. Thanks for the Irish Soda bread kudos and of course the laughter for the messy kitchen. (Which is, by the way, still Very Messy. We just can’t win, can we?)
March 20th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Hey, that’s a great shot; magnificent! I’d love to have seen an eagle like you did and to successfully take a picture of this beautiful bird in action, woaw!!!…