bald eagle

I saw a bald eagle from my kitchen window!

The story starts early one morning last week. Just before daylight, I heard a big "thwump!" sound coming from out on the road.  I figured there had been a wreck and I looked out the window.
I saw brake lights and a little bit of a back up in traffic, but in about a minute, the cars started moving again.

After it got light outside, I glanced out and noticed cars backed up again. This time, there was a police car with lights flashing, pulled off the road. An officer got out, pulled his weapon and fired two shots...low toward the ground. He got back in his car and drove away

That's when I realized a deer had been hit by a car...but not killed, and the policeman was there to end it's suffering.

So, there was the deer carcass laying there, not too far off in the field next door. Gradually, as animals began eating it over the next few days, it was dragged further from the road, to a position where I could see it easily from my kitchen window.  Buzzards came.

NOT the eagle here - these are buzzards

They are interesting, so throughout the day I would go to the window and watch them for a few minutes.

Now finally, here is the part with the eagle...

At one point, this enormous bird flew sort of  low over the group of buzzards, and then flew into the woods out of sight.

It was like all the buzzards looked at each other and said, "let's get out of here!" 

They all flew away.

  The next time I looked out, there he was!

At first, I didn't know it was an eagle. I looked at it with binoculars and I could see the beak was hooked like an eagle and he had huge yellow feet.  But his head wasn't pure white, like you see in photos of eagles. 

So I looked online to see if it could be some other type of bird, but I found that eagles have speckled heads until they are 4 or 5 years old. It was an eagle!

I know these pictures aren't the best - that's as close as I can zoom in. In the photo below, the eagle has his wings up and back as he is tugging off a strip of  flesh.

Look at the size of it compared with the deer!

He was there eating quite awhile...and then back again on Sunday morning.

I never would have imagined I would see an eagle around here - I was so surprised!

I did read that they are increasing in number again and they are becoming more common in this part of the country when it isn't their breeding season.