My husband Jim, and I, started up our Sunday eagle drives for the months that
the sheep are brought back to the Willamette Valley grass fields east and south
of Albany. Just for grins we started out with a drive by the Tangent eagle
roost around 10:30a feeling pretty sure we would not see any eagles at the
roost this time of morning, but we did spot one immature BALD EAGLE flying
nearby. Zero at the roost. We then went over the freeway to Brownsville and
made our way north along the roads east of Interstate 5 to Hwy 34.
Forgot my notepad, so from the notes I jotted on the Kleenex box were 28
KESTRELS, 1 COOPER’S HAWK, 1 male NORTHERN HARRIER, 7 immature BALD EAGLES, 4
adult BALD EAGLES, 2 RED TAIL HAWKS and 1 immature GOLDEN EAGLE. The immature
Golden, possibly the one Jeff Fleischer saw around late October, was in a line
of trees off of Morgan Road. It was at the top of a tree and being harassed by
several Ravens. Every few minutes it gave up it’s post and flew around to get a
reprieve from the Ravens and we got a good view of the underside pattern on
wings and tail.
We were surprised at the low number of Red Tails we saw. Twenty or more is the
norm on our drives.
Lots of sheep in the valley now but only one field had sheep with large lambs.
Maybe as the lambing season picks up, so will the number of eagles.
We did notice a very large nest in a tree across from the old dairy on Engle
Road. Does anyone know if this is a new eagle nest? It seems kind of low for
an eagle nest, but quite large for a hawk.
Carol and Jim Hiler
N. Albany
