I usually do my mercury collector change-out on Tuesday but since the forecast is iffy at best for tomorrow, I thought I'd do it today when the weather is superb. When I got to the top, the anemometer briefly was motionless. The air is crystal clear and I could hear Canade Geese WAY off in the distance taking off and heading over toward Rt. 2. Yellow-rumped Warblers seemed quite active and chipped constantly from beneath me (the top of the tower is about 30 feet above the top of the canopy).

There's a Bald Eagle pair that has staked out a new nesting site near one of my stream sampling stations. They stole a Red-tailed Hawk's nest and built on it. It's not very visible from the ground other than being a huge bundle of sticks. But, from 120 feet up, I could see with naked eye, one Bald Eagle in the nest. After watching for a bit with binoculars, I could make out two birds. One, presumedly the female, was sitting down in the cup of the nest and the presumed male was sitting on the edge of the nest in between me and she. He fed her a scrap of something while I watched. I'm not terribly familiar with eagle behavior but does any of this indicate sitting on eggs?

And to top it off, as I was driving across the Solomons Bridge this morning, a Peregrine Falcon flew towards the St. Mary's side of the river. It would be nice if they had enough progeny that they would need to expand back onto the bridge where they nested during the second atlas. For the last couple of years, they've been apparently nesting on the liquid natural gas platform about a mile out into the Bay near Cove Point. Pigeons beware!

Tyler Bell

California, Maryland