Bald Eagles

Here's a pair of Bald Eagles I saw at Duke Island Park last week.

Someone said they saw an eagle in a tree along the path I was taking, so I was certainly paying more attention than usual to the trees. I was just about at the point of thinking I had either gone past the eagle without spotting it or the eagle had flown off. That's when I spotted these guys.

I'm pretty sure that the guy had said he saw "an eagle", so seeing 2 of them up in a tree was actually better than I expected. I didn't have the best line of sight in the world, but it still provided a pretty good view of them. I don't know whether the guy only saw the adult eagle (perhaps mistaking the immature eagle for a cluster of leaves/branches), or whether a 2nd eagle landed in the tree after the guy left. I wasn't exactly sure what the darker bird was until I got my binoculars on it.

I have to wonder exactly what was going on here. The tree was on the opposite shore of the Raritan River, so it was a reasonable place for a Bald Eagle to be looking for some fish to eat. But what was a full grown Bald Eagle doing hanging out with an immature eagle? The immature eagle looks too old to be under the care of a parent (I'm going to guess the immature eagle is about 2 years old), and is way too young to be the adult eagle's spouse. Perhaps the adult eagle was indicating that this territory is taken, and that the juvenile should leave? Or maybe the adult eagle has no territory of its own, and these were just 2 eagles checking out the local competition?

The adult flew off down river 1st, and then the immature eagle flew off in roughly the same direction. I headed in that direction myself but failed to spot either of them a 2nd time.

April 4, 2022 at Duke Island Park
Photo 186782144, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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