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Man hits a bonanza with recent sighting of eagles

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Photo Courtesy of Jim Kroll • These four bald eagles were observed along Mendota Road near Abingdon, Virginia.

Jim Kroll sent me a recent email about a Jan. 30 sighting he made on Mendota Road in Abingdon, Virginia.

“I saw three hawks and an eagle close together in the same tree,” he wrote in his email. “The eagle and one hawk appear to be almost side-by-side on the same limb.”

He added that he had never observed such a combination in the same tree.

“I did not know they got along that well with each other,” Jim wrote.

He noted that he regularly sees hawks near his home in Abingdon and occasionally sees eagles on Mendota Road.

“There was a second eagle,” he added. “The two eagles would fly off together to the river, swooping around each other along the way.”

He said that he watched the hawks and eagles for probably 30 to 45 minutes as they would fly away from the tree multiple times and then return.

He also reported that the hawks were larger than the eagles. This bit of information got me to thinking about his sighting due to the fact that there are no hawks bigger than a bald eagle.

Once I looked at the photo that Jim shared with his email, I realized that his sighting was more remarkable than he realized.

“All four of the birds are eagles,” I wrote to him after viewing the photo. “The dark ones are immature eagles.”

“All four of the birds are eagles,” I wrote to him after viewing the photo. “The dark ones are immature eagles.”

According to information from the East Tennessee State University Eagle Cam project, it typically requires four to five years before young eagles develop the characteristic yellow bill with white head and tail of an adult bird.

Remember that Jim saw a second adult eagle that does not appear in the photograph he shared.

I’m not sure what was taking place with this appearance by multiple eagles. I’m favoring the possibility that the young dark eagles might have been the young of the adult pair of birds. Female eagles are larger than male eagles, so it is also likely the adult bird in the photo is a male and the other eagles in your photo are all females.
The fact that Jim saw five eagles at a single location at the same time is worth commending.

I informed him that I feel lucky when I see one eagle or a pair. I told Jim that to see five eagles at one spot is exceptional and congratulated him.
After I shared my opinion that all the birds in his photo were eagles, he emailed me again.

“We were probably a football field length away from the tree the eagles were in and just jumped to the conclusion that the darker birds were hawks,” he wrote to me.
He had considered how large the birds looked in flight, and he noted that their size and wingspan had not seem right for hawks, but he said he never thought about the other three birds also being eagles. He also shared another photo of the adult eagles flying toward the river.

“Their wingspan was impressive,” he wrote. “It was cool watching them swoop around each other near the river.”

He also shared that he saw another eagle recently near the Nordyke Bridge, five to six miles from where he saw the group of eagles.

Jim added that he has seen eagles at the top of South Holston Dam and along the Virginia Creeper Trail near Alvarado.

The ETSU Eagle Cam project operates eagle cams in Johnson City near Winged Deer Park and in Bluff City.

https://www.etsu.edu/cas/biology/eagle-cam/cameras.php

Here’s some more information about bald eagles from the ETSU Eagle Cam website.
Haliaeetus leucocephalus, better known as the bald eagle, is the United States’ national bird and is an easily recognizable species even to the casual observer. No other bird has a bright white head and tail with a massive yellow bill.
Bald Eagles belong to the family Accipitridae, which also includes hawks, kites, harriers and Old World vultures.

The scientific name roughly translates to “white-headed sea eagle,” which is appropriate because these birds are almost always found nesting near water.

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To share a sighting, ask a question or make a comment, email me at ahoodedwarbler@aol.com.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Bald eagles are often associated with wetland habitats.

Region’s biggest woodpecker is surprisingly shy

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Photo by Bryan Stevens • A Pileated Woodpecker pays a visit to a walnut tree.

I heard the raucous antics of the large woodpecker before I saw it. A large Pileated Woodpecker had landed in the upper branches of a wild cherry tree near the creek that runs past my home. From spring to summer, the leaves of the tree provide green shelter for a variety of songbirds. During the winter, the tree is a stark outline against the winter sky and offers no concealment — not that a bird as large as a Pileated Woodpecker — it’s the size of a crow — would find it easy to hide itself.

One thing’s certain. A sighting of a Pileated Woodpecker never fails to impress. This bird has a loud, raucous cackling call, which is often heard before the bird is observed. This woodpecker spends a good amount of its time low to the ground, so when one takes flight unexpectedly, often calling loudly as its powerful wing beats carry it away from an observer, the moment can be somewhat startling. These experiences of sudden and unexpected sightings of one of these woodpeckers is often accompanied by exclamations of surprise. Hence common names such as “wood-hen” and “Lord God Bird” have been adopted for these woodpeckers. Other names for the pileated have included carpenter bird, cock-of-the-woods and wood-hen.

Photo by Bryan Stevens • A Pileated Woodpecker pokes its head into a cavity excavated into a dying tree.

At one point, the Pileated Woodpecker was relegated to second place when it came to the size of native woodpeckers. The often inaccessible swampy woodlands and river bottoms of the American south were home to the former title holder, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. With the unsettled status of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker — is it extinct or is it still lingering in an Arkansas swamp? — the Pileated Woodpecker is considered the largest woodpecker in the United States. If incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers should emerge in the future, the Pileated Woodpecker would once again find itself overshadowed by this dramatically larger relative.

Photo by Bryan Stevens • A male Pileated Woodpecker climbs the trunk of a walnut tree.

Although the Pileated Woodpecker can reach a length of 19 inches, the bird weighs only about 11 ounces. Male and female look similar with a black and white body and a bright red crest on the head. In fact, the term “pileated” in the species’ name comes from from the Latin “pileatus,” meaning “capped.” Males show a red stripe — or mustache — on the cheek that is not present in females.

As mentioned earlier, the Pileated Woodpecker often can be found low to the ground, foraging on tree stumps and fallen logs, as well as in taller, living trees. The reason for this behavior rests with one of its favorite foods — the humble carpenter ant. The pileated is not the only woodpecker that supplements its diet with ants. For instance, the Northern Flicker is also fond of dining on these insects. Studies conducted on the dietary preferences of Pileated Woodpeckers have revealed that as much as 40 percent of the diet is made up of ants. Some pileated woodpeckers appear to have developed quite an addiction for ants with some individuals dining almost exclusively on ants. These woodpeckers also eat wild fruits and nuts, as well as other insects and their larvae. The Pileated Woodpecker will occasionally visit a feeder for suet or seeds, but I’ve not had much luck overcoming their instinctive wariness.

Pileated Woodpeckers — usually a mated pair — have been among my wild neighbors for years, but they are shy, retiring birds. Despite their bold appearance and capacity for making quite a racket, the Pileated Woodpecker usually otherwise goes out of its way not to attract attention to itself. Because of this, close-up observations of the largest of our woodpeckers are experiences to savor.

The bird’s enthusiastic ability to excavate cavities in rotten trees is a boon to other species of birds. Certain species of ducks as well as owls, bats, squirrels and other species of wildlife will often make use of cavities created by Pileated Woodpeckers for roosting locations or to raise their own young.

Worldwide, there are about 180 different woodpeckers, but the family is conspicuous in its absence from Australia, Madagascar and New Zealand. The Pileated Woodpecker ranges across the North American continent, with birds present in the forests across Canada and the eastern United States as well as certain areas along the Pacific coast.

Many of the world’s other woodpeckers have quite interesting common names, including Melancholy Woodpecker, Powerful Woodpecker, Speckle-breasted Woodpecker, Yellow-crowned Woodpecker, Crimson-bellied Woodpecker, White-naped Woodpecker, Crimson-backed Flameback and Pale-headed Woodpecker.

Photo by Bryan Stevens • A Pileated Woodpecker hitches its way along the trunk of a Live Oak laden with Spanish moss.