Golden Eagles Colorado                     click to enlarge

High above the cliffs in the foothills North of Ft. Collins, a pair of Golden eagles perform a courting ritual. They have reoccupied their nest which clings precariously to the face of the cliff wall that juts several hundred vertical feet into the sky and are now in the process of re-bonding, prior to mating and laying eggs.

For several hours in an on again, off again manner, they suddenly take wing and perform amazing acrobatics and synchronized flying that appears to be choreographed or at least very well practiced. They will fly within inches of each other, turning and swooping, diving and tumbling until they finally tire and return to the nest.

The female will sit on the nest while the male goes off and hunts for nesting material, returning with a new branch or something to line the inside of the nest. He rarely brings back food as the female isn’t sitting on eggs at this point. I have been photographing this pair of birds for several years and noticed that they leave the nest area to mate. They fly together for a while in another aerial display, then land on a point of rock or the top edge of the cliff to mate, returning to the nest afterwards. They may mate at the nest site, it’s just that in all my time observing them I have never seen it.

These particular birds are nesting about 3-4 miles from my home but because of a distinctive feather pattern of missing primaries on one of the birds I recognized them as the pair that have been using the rock-face behind the house as a resting and observation point for their hunting. They may be the parents that have brought their offspring here to dump them when it was time for them to leave the nest as described in a pervious post.  http://www.bigshotsnow.com/higher-than-the-clouds-lower-than-the-heavens/

This year because of the damage sustained during the flood of September 2013 the area of the river which runs in front of the cliff where the nest is located was severely damaged and the restoration will apparently take most of the summer to complete and consequently the entire area has been placed off-limits. So it looks like the family gets a pass from being photographed this year. As the nest and the eagles are easily 1/4 mile from the observation area photographing them is not intrusive. It does take some powerful glass however to get even mediocre pictures of them.

While that is disappointing, this being Colorado and an area rich in wildlife, there will be plenty of subject matter to train my lens on. I’ve already got my eye on a new nest of Great Horned Owls and my old standby’s, the Bald eagle family, is revving up for a new season. So I’m tanned, I’m rested, and I’m ready for the summer. How about you?