The Eagle Has Landed

The following is copied from an email that I just sent to my daughter:

On Monday three eagles, two adults and one juvenile, landed on this old dead popple tree across the marsh.  Even though it was as big as the adults, we knew that one of them was a juvenile because they don't get their adult plumage until the second year.  The adults took off after awhile, but the youngster stayed in that tree for four solid days.  We saw the adults come back a few times, possibly bringing food for the kid, but we couldn't tell for sure at that distance.  

On Friday the robins and the blue jays were raising a ruckus because the kid had apparently gone out of his tree and landed in our old vacant dog pen.  We didn't witness this, but how else could the kid have gotten in there?  It would seem that, if it had flown in, it could have flown out anytime it wanted to, but the kid insisted that it would rather beat its brains out trying to walk right through the fence, completely ignoring the open gate.  

I figured that if I entered the pen myself it might cause the eagle to either fly out or walk out the gate.  I knew better than to push it hard, I just eased along the fence, stopping to take a picture now and then.  This caused the kid to ease along the fence ahead of me, until it came to the gate and eased right on through it.  It was nice of the kid to stop and pose for one last picture before flying away. 

The flight was unimpressive, just a short hop over to the log pile, where it perched for awhile, driving the robins and blue jays nuts.  We didn't see it leave, and it must not have gone far, because I saw it perched on the woodpile inside the barn later in the day.  It did leave eventually, after I ran the chain saw for awhile, but I don't know if it flew away or walked away.  The robins and blue jays talked about it for hours, which is understandable because they had probably never seen anything like this in their lives.