Bald Eagles on Elmore Ave.

For awhile we have been spotting bald eagles in our neighborhood (only 35 miles north of Manhattan). About four months ago an eagle sat up in a (big) tree in the back of our neighbor’s yard across the street (UPDATE: Brigid says it was more like two years ago, and there were two of them, as the boys arrived home on the bus).

Recently they’ve been popping up all over the place. Brigid has seen them on the grounds of St. Augustine’s school and church (Catholic eagles evidently) and they are frequently visible from river side parks as they fly up and down the Hudson or fly over the Croton Dam and hang out at the Croton river.

These are all part of a group of 13 (or maybe 16) roosting at George’s Island, in the Montrose/Buchanan area, a few miles north of us.

This afternoon I was home for lunch and at 1 o’clock Brigid pointed out two eagles and two hawks (or possible three eagles and a hawk) at about 300 feet, looping around our neighbor’s back yard and also up the street. I grabbed the trusty Fuji E550 and took two shots out the picture window and then went outside and took another picture. The first picture window shot and the outside picture were pretty interesting.

Here’s the first one with all four birds – can you spot them?

Here I’ve cropped and blown up the image of the three raptors on the left above:

Here’s the outdoor shot of just one of the eagles:

and here’s the cropped and enlarged section from the picture above:

All right, I realize that I wont be getting any calls from National Geographic any time soon, but not bad for shooting through a window and then running outside with a small digital camera.

And it is tremendously cool that the once endangered Bald Eagle is now regularly appearing in my neighborhood.

If you’ve spotted Bald Eagles lately, please leave a comment!