Field Orno- Windsor Locks Canal Trail

Today I was supposed to go to Longmeadow Flats but after 45 minutes of searching, being unable to find it on a map, and having weird issues with the website I am convinced that this it's a conspiracy theory and it never actually existed. At around 7:30 AM we ended up right by Fannie Stebens Wildlife Refuge, which we went to for the first day of this class. It was sunny all day and around 50-60 degrees F. We walked down the road next to the boggy area to see if we could find more herons. There was a RIDICULOUS amount of Canada Geese with lots and lots of goslings being fed bread by some lady (appreciate the enthusiasm and the fact that she seems to really love geese but also bread is bad please don't feed ducks and geese bread it can block their digestive systems and no one wants that). There was also a female Mallard with her ducklings and a Mute Swan chilling by the road in the shade. We then decided that rather than walk through Fannie Stebens again we would go to see the Bald Eagle nest on a trail less than 5 miles from our house at about 8:20 AM. Yesterday I declared chipmunks as my arch nemesis as a joke but when we got there we looked down to see a small weasel with a dead chipmunk nearly the size of it in its mouth and I feel like it was nature's way of apologizing. There were tons of other animals besides birds as well like beavers and painted turtles. On our way up the canal one of the eagles (I believe it was the male of the pair as it was much smaller than the other one we saw in the area) sitting in a tree by the nest, which is what the pictures are of. Later we saw a larger eagle, probably the female, fly over us from that direction. On our way back to our car we stopped by the nest to see the one of them feeding a juvenile that sadly was a little camera shy. Right after leaving a Cooper's Hawk landed right above us on a low branch. After taking some pictures we turned around to walk to a different viewpoint and when we turned around it was gone. We heard some birds start panicking to our left and we turned just in time to see the hawk snatch a blackbird right out of the air. Since it was almost noon we walked all the way back to our car right after, making that an exciting end to today's excursion.

Posted on May 22, 2020 12:52 AM by jrose489