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Continue reading →: Eagle Nest Update, May 31, 2025The young eagle in the new Benbow nest has transformed from a downy bobblehead into a fierce-looking mini eagle. The parents are no longer spending every minute in the nest and the youngster can now feed itself. Unfortunately, frustrating light conditions make for poor images–I arrived at the nest watching…
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Continue reading →: To Catch a LampreyThe Osprey is one of only two raptors with worldwide distribution (the other is the Peregrine Falcon). Only six land birds total have such a wide range. Osprey, like the Bald Eagle, have made an impressive comeback from being endangered by the use of the pesticide DDT which was banned…
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Continue reading →: Eagle Nest Update May 16, 2025At 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…
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Continue reading →: One Otter, Two Goslings, and Three OspreysThis time of the year the river is getting busy. Birdsong is loud and varied as the colorful neotropical migrants are arriving and claiming their territory and the yearlong residents are doing likewise. A new Canada Goose family has already hatched goslings. Common Mergansers, Wood Ducks and Mallards are pairing…
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Continue reading →: Eagle Nest Update May 5, 2025The tiny eaglet spotted in the nest last week is less tiny now, but for at least a few more weeks, it’s going to be challenging to see and photograph it. I try not to lament how much easier it was to see the happenings of eaglet rearing in the…
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Continue reading →: April Round-up“It is spring again, and the earth is like a child who knows poems by heart.” –Rainer Maria Rilke. In Humboldt, it is April that epitomizes spring, arriving on the cold heels of March when days were just starting to stretch out, buds on trees were fattening, last fall’s leaves…
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Continue reading →: Give Prayer a ChanceThanks to the dedication of the Yurok Tribe with the assistance of the National Park Service, California Condors have been reintroduced to their ancestral home of Humboldt County. Building on decades of successful reintroduction of the species in other habitats in the western US, the condor was rescued from extinction.…
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Continue reading →: New Yard Bird!April 14, 2025: Today was the first day this year that truly felt like spring at the river. The last few times I’ve been there lately a lingering dense fog has at long last lifted only to be replaced by a cold biting wind, masking bird sounds and holding activity…
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Continue reading →: Eagle Nest Update: April 9, 2025Do you remember those visual puzzles we all did as kids where you compare two apparently identical drawings and try to pick out the subtle differences between them? The girl has a bow in her hair in this one, but a flower in the second one. The man has five…
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Continue reading →: Eagle Nest Update: March 24, 2025When I arrived at the nest-watching spot on Monday, a thick fog completely blocking the view across the valley to the nest was just breaking up and was being replaced by harsh hazy sunlight. It took me a while to even find the new nest, partly because it is so…
Welcome to Free Range Photography, a photo-journal of encounters with birds and wildlife, mostly in Humboldt County, California.
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