The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note any observations you have made of the world around you. Snails, fish, insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds and/or flowers. All are worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located.
May 13, 2013
Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
The plan had been to go out into the bay this day to move the sailboat back onto the buoy. The buoy is in well-protected, fairly shallow water, which is great, except when we get extreme low tides. The boat will ground and lean over without water under its keel. There have been minus tides since last week, so a few days ago we moved the Penguin further out and anchored it...you can see it on the far right in the photo below.
I love to go out kayaking in the bay, so I was looking forward to it, until we went out to the beach and found a sudden squall had blown in. Windy and spitting rain. Kayaking was out of the question.
This weather had NOT been in the forecast, but after the fact, looking at the NOAA data, we can see what happened. A couple of intense convection bands formed offshore that morning and moved inland, blowing out of the west. Air pressure dropped (green line in the graph on the right) and by 3 pm a squall hit the inland waters. The wind picked up and suddenly it was blowing 25-30 mph, with horizontal rain. The blue and red lines on the graph represent wind and gusts for those couple of hours, after which the weather became more typical.
NOAA radar image, 10 am
NOAA wind data, past few days
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
As we drove by the beach, with the gale blowing straight in out of the west, we saw several Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) there. Two adults standing near the water looking out to sea and one juvenile soaring above them. Hard to see in this distant shot, with their light heads against the light water, but that's them to the left and right of the blue flipper, with a close-up of the nearer eagle.
What would eagles be doing standing on the beach? We have many Bald Eagles in the Salish Sea and I see them most days. They are fish eagles, but a major part of their diet here is terrestrial animals, such as rabbits and carrion. I've heard there's a nest uphill a ways in the trees but it's private property so I have no idea how close it is to the beach. I've seen eagles on the beach in the past working on carrion, sometimes in competition with turkey vultures, but this time there was no carrion in sight.
It was a little tricky taking photos since rain was blowing straight in the car window, and the sky was stormy dark, but I did take a few. The juvenile soared off to the north, with that classic horizontal profile, unlike the V-shape of vultures, the only other huge bird around here.
Soon one adult took off also. It spread its enormous wings, 6 feet across, gave a little hop, and it was airborne....circled, and soared off north.
The other eagle lifted off as easily. Usually when eagles take off from the ground, as when they are working on roadkill, to avoid cars, they labor to get into the air. It's slow and takes a lot of flapping. Here, they rose into the air with just an angling of their wingspread straight into the wind, letting the 30 mph wind lift them. It occurred to me maybe they were enjoying the currents, swooping and circling. Here she's catching a gust.
I think this eagle is a female based on the
eye and mandible features in this zoom photo, taken as she soars past me.
Facial expressions of eagles always looks so serious, but I know I'm imposing my human perception there. Who knows what she is feeling?
After all of them soared off, out of the bay, I walked down to the beach to where they had been standing. Tracks! This beach is more gravely than the sandy one where I was puzzling large bird tracks earlier, but we can get a pretty good sense of eagle prints. The tide was coming in, but I took a photo, with scale. BIG birds.
The squall passed by evening. The next day was warm, sunny and pretty calm. We went out in the kayaks and moved the boat the following day.
###
Good luck to be passing by right at that moment, to see them. Any day you see an eagle is a good day.
What's happening in your neck of the woods? What wildlife are you seeing, what's blooming or flying?