{"id":21277,"date":"2014-01-09T04:11:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T11:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=21277"},"modified":"2014-01-09T04:11:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T11:11:30","slug":"two-bald-eagle-surprises-one-good-the-other-not-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/09\/two-bald-eagle-surprises-one-good-the-other-not-so-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Bald Eagle Surprises – One Good, The Other Not So Much…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Bald Eagle in my own suburban yard in the middle of a big city –\u00a0yesterday it happened once again!\u00a0 But my delight was tempered by something ominous.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/a><\/p>\n

As I opened my garage door to leave for the camera shop to pick up a new lens that was being calibrated this adult Bald Eagle was\u00a0calmly staring down at me from the elm tree in my side yard.\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0happened once before a few weeks ago and this may or may not be the same bird.\u00a0 I really cannot describe the joy it gives me to see such a sight in my own yard.\u00a0 I\u00a0 quickly grabbed my other camera and fired off a few shots of\u00a0the bird before I had to leave to pick up my gear.\u00a0 As you can see it was snowing and foggy so conditions weren’t ideal.<\/p>\n

But all is not well in this image.\u00a0 There’s fishing line hanging down\u00a0below the eagle with a dead bird dangling from it – something I didn’t notice at the time.<\/p>\n

When I returned from the camera shop the eagle was gone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/a><\/p>\n

But thankfully, very<\/em> thankfully, the fishing line and dead bird remained behind.\u00a0 Because of the white bill and very dark plumage I wonder if it might be the remains of a coot.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what really happened here.\u00a0 Most likely the eagle landed in the tree with the fishing line and dead\u00a0bird trailing behind and then when it took off the line snagged in the tree.\u00a0 If that’s the case it’s an extremely fortunate outcome for the eagle.\u00a0 I can only imagine the pitiful\u00a0scene if the fishing line had remained entangled\u00a0in both the\u00a0tree and the eagle when it took off.\u00a0 It’s also possible that the line was already in the tree when the eagle landed but I\u00a0have serious\u00a0doubts about that.<\/p>\n

There’s a suburban fishing pond about a quarter-mile below my home and the Jordan River\u00a0runs nearby.\u00a0 I suspect the eagle is drawn to the neighborhood by the fishing opportunities and likes to perch in my tree because it’s the biggest, tallest tree around.\u00a0 I’ll make an attempt to retrieve the\u00a0fishing line from my tree but I have doubts it can be done without seriously\u00a0endangering life and limb.\u00a0 It truly is a huge tree.<\/p>\n

With 40 of our Utah Bald Eagles\u00a0recently confirmed dead from West Nile Virus I’m\u00a0particularly concerned for their welfare right now (even though there’s apparently\u00a0some\u00a0skepticism in the scientific community that WNV is the actual culprit).<\/p>\n

I despise monofilament fishing line!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Bald Eagle in my own suburban yard in the middle of a big city – yesterday it happened once again! But my delight was tempered by something ominous.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[355,334,8],"tags":[43,400,188,1825,1810],"class_list":["post-21277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-bald-eagle","tag-haliaeetus-leucocephalus","tag-jordan-river","tag-monofilament-fishing-line","tag-west-nile-virus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/bald-eagle-8510-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5xb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}