Bonnie - here is a photo from 2007 Hudson River Ramble with Bruce R.(looking away), Rob Taylor & me)
I'm not sure who actually took the photo.
Rob knew more about eagles than any mortal without a PhD in ornithology should. He'd accompany the Eagle Expert as 'muscle'. Rob would carry equipment & scale up the trees to survey the nests and habitat. He'd tell us stories about the short window they had to tag the eaglets. There was a sweet spot when Mama Eagle would leave the little ones in the nest and the eaglets were not yet big enough to fight back while being tagged. Since Rob was the guy holding the eaglet, this was important. Mom eagles are very protective of their young. Rob told us of eagle justice. Raccoons would scale up vine covered trees to the huge nests for tasty eagle eggs. Rob watched once as Mama Eagle snagged a thieving raccoon and dropped him from well beyond the nest.
The first couple hours of the trip, every time Rob said 'there's an eagle', we'd all pull out our cameras & snap a photo. We quickly realized there were a lot of eagles & we could wait for better photos.
He will be missed.
Pat S
2 additional notes -
1. Seeing this picture - I think I may have met him after all. He just looks very familiar. Not sure where or when but Hudson River paddlers do get around some.
2. When I asked if I could post this, in addition to saying "Of course", Pat also mentioned that she thinks that the picture may have been taken by Don Yackel, the gentleman whose blog I'd linked to in my original post.
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