Rebuilding the nest

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Rebuilding the nest

February 10, 2021 by Mike Powell

Last Thursday I enjoyed watching a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) couple working on rebuilding their nest at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. One member of the couple remained in the nest while the other one went off in search of sticks to add to the nest. Together they worked to arrange the new sticks and slowly seem to be raising the height of the walls of the nest. If you click on the images, you can get a closer look at the eagles and their building materials.

For those of you who have been following my posts on the two eagle nests at my favorite wildlife refuge, this is the “small” one, the one that was damaged last summer when a branch broke off. It is a bit of a race to see if the nest will be in good enough shape when the eagles are ready for nesting, but I am really hopeful that it will be. I will be keeping an eye on the nest and will continue to provide updates.

Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, Winter | Tagged Bald Eagle, Bald Eagle couple, bald eagle nest, Canon 50D, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Tamron 150-600mm, Woodbridge VA | 10 Comments

10 Responses

on February 10, 2021 at 7:31 am | Reply picpholio

Flying in haevy cargo !
on February 10, 2021 at 7:42 am | Reply Dan Antion

He’s moving a lot of material, Mike.
- on February 10, 2021 at 8:03 am | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Another photographer told me he saw the eagles at the other nest bringing in grasses to line the nest. I don’t think they are yet at that stage at this nest.
on February 10, 2021 at 9:17 am | Reply Molly Lin Dutina

Love the shadow on the back of the head in photo #1. I’ve never seen a flying cattail! Fun.
on February 10, 2021 at 10:14 am | Reply Suzanne- Happily Decluttered

Wow! That would have been really cool to watch.
on February 10, 2021 at 4:09 pm | Reply Reed Andariese

Nice Mike! Enjoy your Eagle images!
on February 10, 2021 at 4:12 pm | Reply krikitarts

Your first image is simply spectacular, Mike. And until I enlarged the second, it looked like the branch was about 3x as long as it was, because the wire of the fence seemed to be an extension of the branch. What a nice set.
- on February 10, 2021 at 5:42 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks, Gary. I am shooting these from a pretty good distance away, so am happy that I managed to get them relatively sharp.
on February 11, 2021 at 11:43 am | Reply Ellen Jennings

Wow, that’s some serious building material. This pair seems to know what to do and how to work it together. Very nice you are getting to capture some of the action, Mike.
on March 8, 2021 at 8:02 am | Reply In the nest | Mike Powell

[…] observed some of the reconstructions efforts and documented it in an early February posting called Rebuilding the nest. It looks to me like the nest has grown considerably in size since that […]