At 5:22 Pacific this nest in Florida held one Bald Eagle sleeping head tucked under wings in a cold and blustering wind.
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After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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Thanks for that link, I’ll be monitoring it along with this eagle cam in Big Bear, California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4-L2nfGcuE
fine link.
-stopped at the southern boundary of the Great Dismal Swamp on a grey winter morning and was treated to a bald eagle perched in tree along with the wake of a beaver heading towards his lodge. The surface was partially iced and there was a scattering of snow present. Reeds, pines, cypress, oak bearing mistletoe rose from water and low ground.
It was quiet, cold, cogent.
Took fotos, now lost.
Keepin them babies warm – see that chick peepin out from under?
Always have loved raptors, especially big hawks and eagles – alone, unafraid, unashamed. I lived for years in cities, San Antonio and Chicago and San Francisco and Oakland, until I finally started to get out to a place in the Oakland Hills in ’89. It was just below Skyline Drive, which is the line along the top of the hills you see looking East from the city or the Gate Bridge, beyond which is only down, into the valley through the tunnel of the East Bay.
I’ve always been a walker/hiker, and I started up the hill even before I got unpacked. Past Skyline I walked East into the woods to where I was standing on the edge facing America, behind me downhill all the way to Japan. For what seemed like the first time in years I got quiet, quiet enough that the little critters started coming out and getting surprised to see a human in their neighborhood.
And then I heard a whoomp of wings and looked up to see a golden eagle approximately the size of a 747, stepping out of a nest right over my head about 20 feet up.
A few years later I saw Baldies in Alaska on a cruise ship gig, in Sitka where they’re as common as starlings. Massive and impressive, but nothing will ever compare with stepping into that Golden’s back yard unexpectedly.
Rob, I know that area around Skyline Drive well. I dated a girl who was a member of the first class after Skyline High School was opened. You could walk around in those woods and get lost and forget you were in the center of a metropolitan mass. This was in the early sixties. The area may be a drug user camping area now.
I had to make the drive from the town of Sonora in the Sierra foothills (100+miles) but the trip was worth it.
Currently there are dozens of Bald Eagles perched in trees watching for the cows to drop their calves. Bald and Golden Eagles eat the after birth. I live a couple miles from the convergence of the Lemhi and Salmon rivers in Idaho.
Nice morning today, mainly clear skies and -11 deg F. Great weather for birds of prey watching.
Love the Dismal-Matamuskeet area. Bald eagles, ospreys, marsh hawks. The best place I’ve seen for baldies was the Snake River canyon. They sit in the treetops, but from the road above the canyon, they look like they’re sitting in bushes right on the side of the road.
have property near there.
heard noise in the barn at dusk, went up the stairs to the loft and a hawk, lightbluish-grey, was trying to get out through a closed window. I tried to open it, the hawk was about two feet away and above beating its wings. I had maybe forty seconds of watching at that distance- it was beautiful. it finally glided down into the eaves and I got the window open. gone in the morning.
had a chamois cloth on a nail, dried as they do. looked close and there was a tiny bird nestled in the folds asleep. had a long look then got the wife so she could see. walked away. gone in the morning.