It's been a strange year in so many different ways. But one sad but inevitable change was the loss of one of our old friends, Spot the eagle (she had a small spot barely visible above one of her eyes, but was even easier to 'spot' in flight since she was permanently missing a wing feather on her left wing). Spot was the female eagle of our resident pair, who nested in the lot next to us. She was already looking like a well-aged eagle when we moved here in 2008, but she continued to nest with us until this year. She showed back up this Spring, and began building her nest, and then suddenly disappeared. Her nest has gone unused this year. Another smaller eagle pair (shown in this picture above), quickly arrived and took over her territory, but have built a new nest a little bit farther from our house than Spot's was. We can't be sure, but we suspect that one of this pair is a previous offspring of Spot's. Of course, it is possible that this younger pair ran Spot and her mate off, but Spot was a very large and aggressive eagle (she chased us on occasion - even swooped down on Jolene's head one time), so it would seem unlikely that any other eagle could have ran her off, and it is more plausible that Spot may have reached the end of her life (bald eagles in the wild live for ~20-30 years). But two more eagles have already replaced her, and time marches on. Some of the pics we took of Spot over the years, posted below:
She was easy to 'spot' with a missing wing feather.
With her last set of chicks. She likely raised ~40 or 50 chicks during her lifetime.
Drying her wings on the tree in our backyard after a rain.
Clearly, she knew how to keep her chicks well-fed.
Watching as her chick practices flying along the bluff, not too long after it had left the nest (they get huge really fast, but don't get the typical white head or tail until they are a couple of years old).
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