Friday, January 03, 2020

Today I spotted a Bird Watcher that spotted something bald

On my regular commute to work through Broomfield this morning, I spotted a warmly dressed man who faced the wrong way on the wrong side of a bus stop shelter. I then spotted that he was looking through a photo camera with a rather large zoom lens.  He appeared to be looking North at something above the horizon, but not in the sky.  Something about all this said "bird watcher!" to me.

Example of Bald Eagle
(Illustrative proposes only)
I'm driving my car in moving traffic, so I wasn't inclined to just start looking intently off into the distance in a direction that was not the road in front of me.  As quickly as I could, I followed his view line and saw the tops of trees in an open space, about 40 yards from the road.  Yup.  Bird watcher.  I look back to the road ahead.  Then, as quickly as I could, I looked at the tree tops to scan for a perched bird shape.  Yup, something large.  ::Look at the road::  I glanced back at that shape.  Bald Eagle!  I double-take to make sure.  Yup!  I briefly consider the notion of stopping my car on the side of the road to get my own rough phone camera shot, but there was no good spot to conveniently stop, and the traffic was moving rather fast.  So, I caught a couple more glimpses of this critter before continuing my day.

I haven't see a Bald Eagle in this area for several years.  It was nice to see one again, minding its own business; not minding the humans.  Hey, Bald Eagle, please eat as many of the prairie dogs and rabbits as you like!  There's too many for the coyotes and foxes around here.

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