Spring fever eagles

Yup...too nice of a day not to head out with temps in the low 40's and clear skies. Decided just to head up to one of my favorite spots about 15 miles from home on the Mississippi just to do some log sitting and see what flew, swam, ran, or crawled past. The resident eagles have been pretty active so I thought I would hang out in the area.


Mergansers heading up river. These are always some of the first waterfowl to head back north every year.



The river ice was really melting today as you could hear the "drip, drip, drip" between the honking of the geese and the occasional eagle behind me somewhere.

Kind of a weird illusion of the river ice making it appear the main flow is higher than the smaller flows around the ice covered sand bars.

After a little while, this bald eagle came by to check out what I was up to.

90% sure this is one of the two eagles which nest about 1/8th of mile from the spot I where I was.

After making a couple of passes, the eagle headed back upstream where it came from. I found a winterkill deer carcass in the woods nearby and dragged it out onto the sandbar for the eagles to get at. There was no sign of a gunshot wound to the deer and there was only a little meat left so not concerned about lead for them to eat. A lead pellet smaller than a BB if eaten by an eagle can kill it within hours.
After a couple of hours I started to get hungry and decided to head for home. Taking the back roads, I suddenly noticed two balds sitting in a chopped corn field about 50-60 yards off the road. My immediate response was WTF??? The last time I had seen something like this was when Nick Elms tipped me off to the garbage fed eagles up near Clear Lake, MN. As I rolled past (eagles are really tolerant as long as you stay in your vehicle), there was a fresh road kill deer which the eagles had found and by looks of the shredding going on, it was obvious they had been feeding on it. SWEET!!!! I rounded the corner at the intersection where the light would be to my back and right on the birds.

As I shot pics out the window, this guy was giving me the "stay the hell away from my dinner" look.

The eagles didn't mind me sitting in the car as I waited to see if they would go back over to the deer to feed. UNFORTUNATELY at about this time, some JACKHOLE in his wife's mini van drives past and notices me watching the eagle. Of course this moron stops, gets out of his van and hollers "Hey!! You see them eagles??".

Yes, asshole, I see the eagles.

I see the eagles flying away you idiot.

So Mr. Soccer Mom gets back into his van and speeds off as I wonder if the birds will come back.

The male (the smaller of the two) was nice enough to swing over one more time and give me a clean shot.

I'll go back tomorrow and stake out the deer kill if the coyotes don't clean it up tonight.