Looking for Eagles

It was 17 degrees out today. Rick and I decided that would make it a perfect day for birdwatching. Well, at least we had a new warm car. Our plan was to drive down to below Raystown Dam, where we often kayak. But not being too crazy, we opted to do our looking from the car, not from the kayak.

We approached Raystown from Huntingdon along the main branch of the Juniata. One of our first sites was a stately old Sycamore in the middle of a field. Someday I want to be good enough with my painting skills to do this tree justice. It would be fun to live close enough to it to it to photograph it in many seasons and moods. It marked the beginning of the river views for us. Our first bird sightings were common mergansers with bright red-orange bills and brilliant white bodies - rusty read heads on the females and green on the males. Unfortunately, we were too far away to get really clear pictures. We also saw some hooded mergansers, but not close enough to photograph.

Then we turned up to the the top of the dam. There is a park up there where you could look out over the frozen lake. We were struck by how totally silent it was, except for deep low groaning coming from the ice. It almost sounded like trapped whale song.

When we got cold, we got back into our warm car and went down from the dam to the Raystown Branch of the river. Where there was open water, right below the dam, Rick said, "This is where I was hoping the eagles would concentrate - just like that one, there!". And sure enough, there he sat on cue. Again the picture was far away so rather fuzzy, but he was there!

We also enjoyed the winter views of the dam and the reflections in the water of the ridges on the other side. As we drove down the Raystown branch, we were treated to lots more common mergansers, a few hoodies and a couple of grebes, to small and too fast to get good identifications on.

Then, right in front of our car, there sat another eagle in a tree. Just as we both saw him he flew, landing in a tree closer to the water. There was a nature path right there, so we stopped the car, and Rick went ahead of me on foot. He got the best photo of the day.

On our way home we stopped near my old sycamore to photograph giant icicles on the cliff. They were well over our heads, and very green. Maybe algae in the ice? We weren't sure.

It was definitely a fun day to be out.