The Neighborhood Eagles

Bald Eagle in Mansfield Hollow State Park, Mansfield, Conn. 

It's the end of Eagle Month here in the Last Green Valley and I've seen Bald Eagles on several occasions recently at one of the nearby preserves, Mansfield Hollow State Park. Bald Eagles mostly hunt and hang out around rivers, coastal areas and larger bodies of water, such as Mansfield Hollow Lake, an artificial reservoir about two miles in its longest dimension.

Adult and juvenile Bald Eagles in a dead White Pine. 

 There are at least two adult eagles and one juvenile (with a brown head) in the Mansfield Hollow reservoir area this winter. There is a known nest site a little south of Mansfield Hollow, on the Shetucket River in Windham, so these birds could very well be that eagle family out hunting for the day. Eagles sightings are a lot more common than they used to be (with low single digit numbers of birds living in Connecticut as recently as the 1990s), but still scarce enough that the state DEEP keeps tabs on pretty much every nesting pair, and seeing them in the wild close to home still seems like a very special treat.

Old road swamped by the Mansfield Hollow reservoir after January rains. 

Overall it's been a very mild winter here in northeastern Connecticut, with just thin and short-lived snow cover and lake ice. Possibly this has encouraged the eagles to stick around the reservoir, which would be completely iced over for long stretches in a more typical winter. I started up my maple sugaring operation last weekend and there has been a fair amount of sap flowing; the traditional start time for maple sugaring in southern New England was more like Valentine's Day.