Free Range Photography

At last, the timing, light and rapidly increasing size of the Benbow Bald Eaglet aligned to give a decent view of what’s happening in the new nest. After almost 6 months of first observing renovations on the old nest, followed by starting from scratch on a new structure about 150 yards downstream, followed by incubation, and a presumed hatch some time in mid April, the youngster is standing tall in the nest and looking more like an eagle than a fuzzy bobble head.

Since I don’t know the date of hatching it’s impossible to pin down the juvenile’s age, but I’m guessing somewhere around 4-5 weeks. Incubation started somewhere between March 8 and 22, with hatch about 35 days after that.

It had been ten days since my last visit to the nest and I was amazed at the progress of the young eagle. I hope to make it up there once a week from now on because the 12 or so weeks to fledging go by way too fast.