A pair of cranes and their colt of this year make a break for it after being startled by gunshots.
This is the Sugar River. I'm told there is a dam within walking distance. And just why would I want to nail down a dam? Because when it gets very cold this winter and the rivers freeze, the water around the dam won't and...the Bald Eagles will gather.
I want to be ready as last winter there were very few of those days with climate change underway.
Unfortunately I've done it again. For whatever reason I somehow end up trotting around on wooded public land the first weekend of deer season almost every year.
The weekend when those who do such things are very excited and sometimes more accidents than usual happen.
Do I know what happened to the blaze orange knit cap that is supposed to be in the car for such events? Of course not.
Plus as there are constant spatters of gunfire in the distance, the creature spotting is at a minimum. The wildlife, not having figured out just yet that it is the season for deer, many of the other creatures figure out before long just who the guns are after and settle down somewhat.
The deer will also get the message and head for mucky swamps, enormous briar patches, and other spots unpalatable to hunters and lay low, particularly on weekends.
The beasties aren't stupid.
There are a few exceptions to the wariness today. Slate-colored Juncos blithely flit from ground to branch and back again. A bigger bird zooms by.
Its a Cedar Waxwing. I hadn't realized how good their coloring is as camouflage in winter.
More distant gunfire and a Kingfisher, making a kind of loud buzzy growling sound, zips with purpose into the distance following the river.
The link below has examples of the buzzy growl, intermixed with the Kingfisher call that sounds more "bird like".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4TuV5TXmEk
I was only able to get one shot of our Kingfisher friend.
See the speck heading over the treetops of the island?
I cropped the photo down in order to see the "speck" and the photo turned out to be rather odd. I suspect Kingfisher is in the midst of preparing for a dive but he looks more like a dabbler riding rough water.
A TOOL USE TANGENT
One never knows where YouTube will lead, and as we've been having an animal tool use conversation for some years on and off- another chapter. A bird who uses bread to catch fish. I think we could consider bread a tool in this case. (Beware the producer's tag at the tail of the piece. Jarring.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNTw7GH325U&feature=related
Then I heard it. The sound of rushing water.
Ahhh, come January there may be a dozen or more Bald Eagles perched in these trees hunting the open water for fish. Something to look forward to during the winter days before Red-tail nesting begins again.
And as if in answer to the thought...
A Red-tail appears and soars into the light.
Donegal Browne
A juvenile Bald Eagle bides her time watching for prey after she has just disengaged her head from out of a sleeping tuck. I can completely understand why she'd decided a nap was the better part of valor.Last night I'd gotten word that there were seven Bald Eagles currently fishing in the open water near the Indian Forge Dam on the Rock River in Wisconsin.
I couldn't wait to go take a look.
Unfortunately the weather was completely dismal. Temps in the teens and a frozen mist coming down which brought visibility to a near white out.
Well, if the Eagles can persevere I thought, so can I. Fortunately for them they are far better suited to the weather. 
Something plunges into the rushing water of the river that has just come over the dam. In a moment the plungee, a male Belted Kingfisher is back on his perch waiting to spot another fish for the next course of his lunch.(Correction: Thanks to Francois Portmann for correcting by inadvertent male Kingfisher into its proper sex, a female. Forget that avian males have the flashy colors, in Kingfishers it is the female who has the rusty orange belt second belt. The male has the gray belt only.)
See the juvenile on the left (note that suddenly there are three Eagles on the branch) is doing the beak in the air look that we most often see from young Red-tails on the nest or from a sitting formel when something passes far overhead. In this case a family of American Crows has decided that mobbing Eagles is their Crow responsibility of the moment.
Suddenly the cawing and fly-bys over the Eagles stops and upon closer inspection of some large black things moving on the far edge of the river it appears that perhaps the Crows are having a conference in their quieter en familia Crow language.
It went on for awhile.
Crows have one language, quiet and melodious, they are technically song birds, for use in discussions with their extended family and another, their famous caw sequences, that we hear them using when signalling long distances to each other or mobbing unwanted company.
Eventually the largest Crow watches the other members of his family stride away.
After a few plops of his bottom in the water, Crow just went ahead and upended himself in the freezing stuff and then wallowed in it. 
When Crow finished his bath, he gave me a look and then everyone in the Crow contingent went back to mobbing Bald Eagles.I'm going back come sunrise to see if the visibility is any better.Next up-- PonDove, Washington Square Park hawkwatcher and a moderator of the NYT Livestream Hawk Cam Chat Room, contributes to a Canadian Broadcasting Company podcast about people's interactions with wild animals in cities.
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/dnto_20120121_75997.mp3
