We are only about three weeks away (give or take a few days) from the beginning of the 2019-2020 Bald Eagle breeding season.  As eagleholics already know, Florida eagles, as well as some elsewhere in North America, have been visiting their nests, adding sticks and fluff, courting, delivering and eating prey in the nest, and in a few cases (in Florida) copulating before our very eyes.

To help viewers predict when eggs might be laid at their favorite nests, I have updated my monthly Egg Calendars of eggs laid since 2006 to include last season’s activities.  They are available here.  They can be downloaded and printed out.

The calendars not only give the dates of all the eggs from 2006-2019, but also show whether the eggs hatched and nestlings fledged.  I have included an empty column for 2019-2020, so anyone can add new information to their own copies of these documents as eggs are laid.

The arrival of eggs at a particular nest is remarkably consistent over the years, within a couple of weeks in most cases.  But the timing can change significantly if one or both mates is replaced, the nest is lost or eagles choose to relocate, foul weather interrupts the normal schedule, or intruders challenge for a nest or territory.

I have also updated my list of all the Bald Eagle cams observed online or by reliable ground observers since 2006.  This list includes codes that I use in the Egg Calendars.  The codes are easy to understand: each begins with the abbreviation for the state or province (for example, GA = Georgia, BC = British Columbia), followed by a fairly predictable alphanumeric sequence to indicate the nest (such as shp = Shepherdstown, blf = Bluff City).  In the Egg Calendars, a number follows the nest ID indicating which egg was laid on that date (1, 2, 3, etc.).

Over the next few days I will begin updating Nest Cam Links.  Some of these have changed or will be changed, others are currently offline, others will no longer be broadcast, and some new cams might go online.  I will do my best to keep up with changes as the season progresses, and I welcome help with this.

As always, if anyone notices errors or omissions, including broken links, in these (or any other) pages, please contact me either here or on Facebook.

I was in the path of the total eclipse of the sun on Monday, 21 August 2017. The birds stopped singing. Until just a few minutes before the moon completely eclipsed the sun, goldfinches, cardinals, and crows sang and called, an occasional Turkey Vulture soared overhead, and a flock of Barn Swallows chatted and flew over the fields. Two or three minutes before the total eclipse, the birds became still, while the crickets got louder.

I was in farm land – acres of green crops, small groves of trees along a creek, a couple of gravel roads, and only two other humans nearby.

The shadow progressed gradually over an hour or so. My Cheerios box with a tiny pinhole showed me the slowly growing crescent. The dimming of light was unnoticeable at first, then became unmistakable. My own shadow on the ground grew faint. At some point the screen on my cell phone became more readable than it is in broad daylight. The skies turned from bright blue with a few wispy clouds, to pastel blue, then to gray. The fields got darker, the trees less distinct. It didn’t look like dusk or dawn – the colors across the land were muted.

The total eclipse came abruptly. One second there was light, then all was in shadow, as if an overhead light had been switched off and only a weak night-light prevented pitch black. The dazzling corona of the sun shone around the edges of the moon, and the distant horizon, outside the umbra, showed some rosy hues. One bright star popped into view. Everything stopped, except the crickets.

The eclipse lasted about two minutes. Then all of a sudden the surrounding dimness was banished in a surprising wash of color as the surface of the sun emerged from behind the moon. The brightness was an illusion – only a sliver of the sun was showing, but it seemed as if the switch had been flipped back on. The restoration of daylight after the slow minutes of anticipation seemed quicker than the fading. Shadows reappeared everywhere – trees, farm buildings, road signs, fences, me. Crops and trees turned green. The sky was blue again.

Soon birds became active, chirping, calling, flying. The swallows took wing after insects, vultures lifted to the sky, a Carolina Wren sang, a Red-Tailed Hawk flew across the fields and perched atop a tall maple.

About five minutes after the sun reappeared, a rooster crowed. Then another, and then another.

I was struck by a feeling of bigness. The wide expanse of sky, in which two huge celestial bodies implausibly converged. Daylight turning precipitously into a vast eerie twilight. Hundreds and thousands of vertebrates and invertebrates unexpectedly moved to alter their behavior. Millions of people across the continent changing their normal routines in order to take in the other-worldly event. The astounding exactitude of the scientists’ predictions of times – to the second – and places – to the geographical degree and minute. The breath-taking rarity and the improbable opportunity afforded a small creature like me to be part of something so enormous. This was not a movie or a documentary or a news report. I was actually there. How cool is that?

I captured a few minutes of video, not of the sun but of the countryside, which to me was infinitely more interesting than the sun.  https://youtu.be/q23aTXWfVnc