Happy Fri-yay! Kick your feet up, grab the popcorn, and join us for movie night: we’ve got Nestflix from Decorah, Decorah North, and the Flyway! In Decorah, Mom graces us with an appearance on the maple. The Decorah North eagles are coping with guests on the North Super Flyway, including a lovely and very plucky subadult. Don’t miss the three-way eagle interaction! The adult-to-adult dinner confrontation could have saved the very hungry subadult’s life, since it stole the dinner prize while the adults were fighting. On the Mississippi Flyway, we have a lovely Mallard drake, an extremely cool juvenile northern goshawk, and a very funny interaction between an eagle and some sandhill cranes.
I hope you enjoy these videos as much as we did. A thousand thanks to our camera operators and videos for finding and preserving such special moments, and to you for watching, sharing, learning, and especially for caring! Prosit!
Decorah Eagles
October 15, 2021: Mom on the Maple
October 15, 2021: Mom spends some time on the maple – https://youtu.be/xSsfVl_LzHw. The video opens with starlings on the maple. The camera operator pans away and returns at 2:35 to find out that Mom has replaced the starlings! We get some nice close-ups starting around 3:48. Look for the plucky little starling that lands below and to the right of Mom. She flies off at 20:05 with her feet hanging down and lands in a nearby tree, where we get some more glimpses of her partially screened behind tree limbs.
Decorah Eagles North
October 15, 2021: The Norths visit the nest and DNF takes a bath – https://youtu.be/cM4fmai9vJ4. While it was wonderful to see the Norths at the nest, I loved seeing DNF take a bath in the clear, cold waters of the stream, beginning at about 6:29. We see her spread her tail feathers and dip her wings and head to channel water down her back. Her beautiful white tailfeathers float on the screen as she indulges in a little spa time, stopping only to make sure that she doesn’t need to worry about the neighborhood crow watch calling in the background. Even in a lovely place like this, life can be hard for an eagle. It’s nice to see her taking a little personal time.
October 14, 2021: Adult with food, adult tries to steal it, SA gets it – https://youtu.be/MDhPfcQPXUE. This video opens at an extremely cool angle! We are looking down towards the ground. An adult has landed with food and a subadult is clearly interested. Another adult is watching everything off to the left. At 1:33, the subadult can’t stand it anymore. It moves in to try to steal a bite, but the adult moves it back. It continues to wait for an opportunity and gets it at 2:12. The other adult rushes in and attacks the first adult. While the two tussle, the subadult takes off with the food!
October 13, 2021: Subadult wants Mr. North’s fish – https://youtu.be/ZArAABhFgpM. Mr. North flies into the North nest with a subadult hot on his tail. He kickboxes it out of the nest, but continues to protest, eventually mantling over the fish to say “MINE!”. He starts to eat at 2:44 and the camera operator moves in for close-ups at 3:19.
Mississippi River Flyway
October 15, 2021: Preening mallard – https://youtu.be/nlRkVCCT_DY. I love ducks! A beautiful drake mallard preens peacefully in the shade of some rushes. His colors – orange legs, green head, blue speculum, rich brown breast – are still vivid and the camera operator gives us wonderful close-ups. Spectacular!
October 14, 2021: Young eagle and cranes – https://youtu.be/YZTJQzbTk5U. While the whole video is lovely, I really loved the opening. The eagle walks toward the cranes, who back up and move out of the way. They eventually walk past the eagle, giving it a fairly wide berth.
October 13, 2021: Bieliki amerykańskie i jastrząb (American bald eagles and hawk) – https://youtu.be/ioDK9510Aoo. The video opens with an adult against a backdrop of American white pelicans – probably on of the few birds that can make a bald eagle feel small! It pans over to a mixed age group of five eagles and zooms in on three of them. At 4:32, the camera operator pans out to give us a look at the rest of the eagles. At 7:44, they find a hawk sitting on a snag. What is that? See the long striped tail, brown plumage, yellow eye, and prominent white eyebrow? That is a juvenile Northern Goshawk, the world’s largest accipiter. Follow this link for pictures and information on ID’ing sharp-shinned hawks, cooper’s hawks, and northern goshawks: https://www.raptorresource.org/2020/12/29/raptor-id-coopers-hawk-or-sharp-shinned-hawk/.
The Raptor Resource Project