Eagle and Crow

I'm sorry I don't have a better photo to describe what happened outside my backyard window on Sunday.

Nowadays, many of us practice Stay at Home.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to Stay at Home work remotely, help to teach our children, binge watch TV programs, exercise, listen to music, surf the interwebs, try to help others get the latest info on vaccine eligibility, do volunteer work, cook, and/or get bored and look out the window.

About that looking out the window, I've missed so much drama Nature has been showing me for free.

Last month, I blogged about watching crows exhibit wintertime behavior I had never noticed before the pandemic.  Why?  Because I am doing a lot of staying at home. 

On Sunday, my spouse looked out a backyard window and saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree.  He called me over.

We live in a semi-urban area - not rural at all.  There are houses all up and down our street.  We've seen bald eagles in a local park, whose paths still aren't that walkable due to a flood back in December.  But this is the first time we've ever seen a bald eagle in a tree right in our neighborhood. There is a creek nearby - I'm sure that had something to do with it.

Oh, did I say a bald eagle?  II meant two bald eagles!  

Both sat there majestically, each in its own tree.  Neither seemed to pay attention to the other.  (The other eagle was too far away and is not in the one picture I was able to take.)  Both perched in total stillness, knowing they were kings (or queens) of the birds.

I don't have much of a zoom - all I got was a dot in the upper center - one of the eagles

Things were about to heat up.  A solitary crow flew to a tree in between the trees.  Uh-oh, I thought.  Bald eagles, after all, are predators. Don't birds flee from them?

Actually, I found (after the incident), crows and eagles don't get along, but it's the crows who fight and win. 

It was midday and it was snowing lightly.  As the two eagles sat in total stillness, the crow bobbed its head, wiped its beak on the tree branch it was perching on, stretched, and moved around, not caring about his (or her) nearby companions.

After a few minutes, the crow flew away.  A few minutes later, one of the eagles left.

No fight.  No blood.  Just me, finally remembering to breathe.

I still can't believe it.

That staying at home thing....it isn't always so bad.