Flying Cormorants and rain soaked eagle.

[Old Dude]

I don't know if these Cormorants are passing through in a migration or maybe here for the season, but I have been seeing more and more of them lately. The eagle is one that hangs around a nearby nest. It is on the river bank at an elevation lower than the road where I take pictures of it, but other trees make it hard for auto focus to pick through the brush

 

[worldtalker]

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I don't know if these Cormorants are passing through in a migration or maybe here for the season, but I have been seeing more and more of them lately. The eagle is one that hangs around a nearby nest. It is on the river bank at an elevation lower than the road where I take pictures of it, but other trees make it hard for auto focus to pick through the brush

I spruced this up a bit..it's worthy of it .

 

[tamrock]

Yesterday around 5:45 pm, I took the dogs for a walk around the open space behind me. Next to the cattail marsh is a small grove of plains cottonwoods. I saw these two spotted mid size raptors land in the tops of cottonwoods and just as I was walking past the cattails and listening to all the redwings blackbirds, I saw one of those raptors glide in a direct line from the top of the tree towards the redwing blackbirds. All of the male redwings took off first and scattered in all directions and that raptor dropped down inside the cattail marsh and out came a whole flock of female redwings making all kinds of ruckus as they came flying out of the marsh. I sat and watched expecting to see a female redwring victim in the talons of the raptor, but it came out empty handed. I got home to see what that raptor was and found it to be a Cooper's Hawk. Watching all that made me cringe a little thinking some redwing was going to die before my very eyes.