Hi all --

Such a nice afternoon, we took our three dogs for a walk in Northwest Branch Park behind our home in Colesville. This is a totally wild and undeveloped part of the park and the "trails" are pretty rough and strewn with fallen trees. However, there are some vernal pools which sometimes attract Rusty Blackbirds so we headed downstream. Almost as soon as we reached the main woods, we heard a lot of crow activity ahead -- maybe an owl or one of the resident Red-shouldered Hawks? Moving towards the commotion, we found the source of all the corvid agitation -- an huge adult Bald Eagle perched about halfway up in a large tree! It flushed when it saw us, from only about 30 feet away, flying to the top of a nearby tree -- the crows went absolutely berserk at this point! The eagle watched us for a short while, then took to the air, soaring over the woods. It was soon joined by a second bird, this a smaller, still immature bird -- both circled over for a while before drifting away out of sigh
t above the canopy.

Whether these were birds on migration and just "stopping by" for a while or if they were prospecting for a territory, don't know...  We shall have to keep our eyes open in coming months.

In any case, a totally unexpected encounter!

Gail Mackiernan and Barry Cooper
Colesville, MD

p.s. Came home to find a bright Pine Warbler at our sunflower feeder...