Faith is like a bluebird you see from afar...

Had a visitor the other night in the backyard. A Juvenile Steller's Jay spent time in our trees during a very windy part of the day. Steller's Jays are my favorite type of bird that we have. Yes, they beat out even the incredible Bald Eagle. (One of the Steller's in our yard can make the same sound an Eagle makes, it's hilarious!) With the bird just sitting there it gave me enough time to run into the house and grab my camera and big lens. I kept creeping closer to him to get different angles and what not. It was super windy so a lot of them ended up with too much motion blur, but I got a few decent ones. Check them out (and don't forget to click the "read more" to see all of them!)

What? You DON'T have Bald Eagles in your backyard?

New roadkill so you know what that means. I actually got some decent shots of this guy in flight. Too bad the lighting was yucky and the background means the wings blend into the photo.

Mature bald eagle photos

We've had that Juvenile Bald Eagle visit the bone pile all week. It's been pretty neat to see, though he was getting annoyed with the attention and flying off more and more. Last night we were surprised to find a mature eagle on the bones. Looks like Jr. decided he needed his parental unit to keep us from bugging him.

Joke was on him, though, because we brought out the cameras again to get some captures of the beautiful mature bald eagle. Here are just a few (I may have taken over 100. Yeah, not sorry.) of the photos I took while he ripped into the carrion.

Juvenile Bald Eagle photos

Here in Alaska when a moose gets hit by a car (or hits a car) and dies or has to be put down, the Alaska State Troopers have a list of people to call offering the meat. All the person on the list has to do is butcher and package the moose.

My dad gets the call for their church so that people who are unable to do the butchering can still get the meat. He got a call on Saturday night (during his and mom's Valentine's Day Date) that a moose had been hit and killed and that they'd be dropping it off at our house.

So all this weekend was about blood and meat and bones... and the bones are now sitting out in the backyard to let the birds pick them clean. Normally that means magpies and ravens but yesterday....

 But instead this guy showed up. He is an immature (juvenille) bald Eagle. I don't think I've ever seen one in our backyard munching on moose bones before. They normally perch in a tree or just fly over (did that a lot when Yuka and Lulu were puppies...) but this guy spent all afternoon ripping left over flesh off of a moose's backbone.

Alaskan Visitors

We had a Moose Cow and Calf visit our backyard this morning. I was on my way out the door when I noticed them so I grabbed the camera and the 100-400mm lens and stood on the deck to take their photos. I try very hard not to get too close/bother the moose when they make it into the yard. Safety first! So that means short little baby moose remain pretty hidden from the camera's view, but I managed to get a few.

I also managed to get a couple of pics of a Robin. All in the rain. It was worth it.