Phil Lanoue Photography

Here is the continuation of the bald eagle’s afternoon adventure in the salt marsh.

As you saw in part one, the eagle left it’s perch after spotting a fish down in the marsh, and flew back toward the tree with it’s catch. We now pick up with what happened next. The eagle took it’s rather modest meal to a branch in the pine tree where it proceeded to dine on the tasty snack. The head of the fish seemed to be particularly appealing as you can see in pic 3 the head has been removed, and in pic 4 it’s down the hatch. Of course the well mannered eagle then needs to clean various scraps of fish parts of it’s beak and it does this by rubbing it across the handy tree branch. With the clean up complete, the eagle now gives me a somewhat disturbing look, as if it did not appreciate my staring at it while it was eating. I suppose if you think about it, I was a bit rude, and was this why our friend decided to leave the tree?! Well possibly, but it did not fly away and leave the area completely, it did another swoop over the marsh and well…what happened after that is a post for another day…

This is the same eagle from yesterday’s post.

Thursday afternoon we noticed this bald eagle sitting in a pine tree along side the salt marsh. The eagle was quite alert and appeared to be actively surveying the area in the direction of the marsh. The bald eagle’s legendary eyesight was on full display as it suddenly burst out of the tree and rapidly headed straight toward a spot in the water where it plucked out a fish. It obviously saw the fish even from a significant distance away and immediately went out to get it. The eagle then headed right back to the pine with it’s fresh catch safely secured in it’s talons.

What happened next after landing in the tree with the fish will be tomorrow’s post. So…stay tuned!

This bald eagle was all over the salt marsh yesterday afternoon. It was using a nearby pine tree as a base of operations from where it would swoop down and grab a fish and then bring the fish back to the tree to eat. We saw it do that several times.

I have quite a few photos of this whole event and will post more tomorrow but for now I just wanted to give you an idea of how close it flew over our heads at one point on it’s way back to home base with a fish.

As soon as I arrived at the marsh area this weekend I spotted a bald eagle sitting in a tall pine tree. I was only watching it for a few minutes when it took off and did a low circle over the marsh and dropped down into the shallow water. It quickly flew up and over the reeds and it was at this point I realized it was carrying a fish which it had just plucked out of the marsh. What made this scene rather interesting was the unusual manner in which the eagle was holding the fish…it had the fish in it’s mouth!!! Normally raptors fly while holding the prey in their feet. This was the first time I had ever seen a bald eagle flying with a fish, even a small one like this, in it’s mouth!  The herons and egrets will carry off fish in their mouths especially if being chased, but an eagle normally will use it’s feet for that purpose.

The eagle returned to the pine tree, flying into the back section of the tree where it consumed it’s snack. After it was finished eating it hopped back out onto some upper branches where it took a good look at me, then continued on surveying it’s domain.