Things to Smile About in Everyday Ramblings

A couple of weeks ago when I was walking through the Portland State campus on my way home from teaching I passed an earnest young woman explaining to a young man what the colloquialism “Preaching to the Choir” means. It made me smile.

Something else that made me smile was the wild bald eagle release about a mile away from my place yesterday afternoon. If you look very very carefully at this context shot (I took just after she lifted off) to the right just under the bridge you can see the V shape of her.

A four-year-old female, (the vet said probably a migrant), they let her go as close to where they rescued her as they could. Just around the corner of the river to the right is a now closed high-end seafood restaurant and there was a merganser (a kind of duck) caught in a fishing net near shore that was reported.

A wildlife rescue person from our local Audubon Society got the call and took off to save the merganser but by the time she got there, the eagle, who was looking for lunch, got tangled up in the net too… They had to euthanize the duck but the eagle only had minor wounds around her feet.

She weighs 12.5 lbs. (5.67 kg), which is less than Carlo! But she is huge, amazingly huge.

There are more pictures here.

They didn’t handle her, they just let her walk out of the carrier and take off. She flew to the roof of the building to the right and then started circling above where she was mobbed by a few intrepid crows before she turned and circled out of sight to the left or north.

That’s it. I just wanted to share.

Last updated February 22, 2016