Thelma and Louise shoot eagles and find…There’s No Place Like Home

TUSCUMBIA-Thelma was at the Rockpile Park below Wilson Dam taking pictures of the flooding and all that water coming through the spillways of the dam.  She met a father on an outing with his two daughters.  He worked at the dam and told Thelma that an eagle flies over the dam like clockwork at 9 AM every day.  Instead of shooting eagles, she got to shoot pictures of the recovery of a fisherman’s body from below the dam.

Later at the Shoals Audubon meeting another birder told her the eagle flies around the dam around 9 AM each morning.   Finally she thought, I’d shoot my eagle.

So she called Louise and talked her into getting up early on a Saturday morning for a trip to the rockpile to get their eagle shots.  It’s guaranteed like clockwork according to two folks she said.  Louise told Thelma to call her at 5 AM to make sure she gets up and gets a shower before they left.  Louise had been bragging on her new phone with all its bells and whistles, it could do just about anything.  Thelma asked her why couldn’t that fancy phone wake you up?

Saturday morning was cold.  The two of them made it to the park and walked back toward the waterfall area near the dam.  Nine o’clock rolled around and fifteen after, half hour after, and forty-five minutes after nine and still no bald eagle.  They swing by McFarland Park, no eagles so they decide to practice using the delay setting on their cameras.   By then, they were freezing and decided to call it a day.  Apparently, the bald eagle decided to sleep in Saturday.  They did get a lot of Great blue heron and white pelican pictures.

The best time to shoot eagles Thelma heard is two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset.  She planned a Saturday trip to Waterloo to try and get a few shots of the ones hanging around the river. A friend in Waterloo had given her several good areas to look for bald eagles.   After the last Saturday, Louise didn’t want to get up early on her off day from work, so Thelma strikes out alone early that foggy and rainy looking morning.  She stops along the way and takes pictures of emus and later an alpaca, and oh course barns.  And no one called the law this time.  Louise must be the shifty looking one she thought to herself.

Thelma and Louise shoot the barn, police called

About half way to Waterloo, a freezing rain and sleeting starts.   What processed you to do this Thelma asked herself?  As she goes by the “wall” as locals call the rock retaining wall along the road leading into town, she spies wild turkeys on the side of the road and stops, but it’s too late to get a good shot of them as they are already too deep into the woods.   Then a redtail hawks flies down the road in front of her truck, so close she almost hits it with her windshield.  Someone is tailgating her, so no chance to slow down and get a shot through the windshield. Another missed opportunity.  She sees several great blue herons along the shore line, but every time she pulls off, they take off.   Taking the Natchez Trace across the river, she tours Riverton, but the eagles have better sense than to be out in this kind of weather.    Later two more trips to Waterloo in better weather late in the evening yields the same result.

Then a co-worker tells Thelma about a nest located along Savannah highway close to town.  She strikes out one afternoon after work and doesn’t locate it, and her co-worker shows her where it is one afternoon after work, but there’s no activity there yet and the nest looked in disarray.  A few weeks later another co-worker tells her he can hear cheeping up in the nest!

 As Thelma walks up to the nest, the female Bald eagle flies from the nest and sits in a near by dead tree. Oh man, she has a white head, so she is a mature eagle!  She gets several pictures of her up in the tree.  Above a mature male and one of last year’s babies still sporting a solid brown head and neck are circling.  Soon the male joins the female in the tree for a spell until she flies back to the nest to check on the eaglets.  After getting a few more pictures of Mom overseeing the eaglets, she calls Louise on the long walk back to her car all excited that she has seen two majestic eagles.  A few weeks later they plan a trip back to the nest, but Louise has come down with the flu, so Thelma takes a couple of photographer friends with her. By now the eaglets sitting in the nest are fairly large with those piercing eyes looking toward the river patiently waiting on the parents to bring supper.

A few weeks passes without checking on the family due to the river flooding.  A photographer friend checking on them after the water recedes sends Thelma a message that one has fledged and the other is sitting in the nest with one of the adults.   By the time she makes it to the nest, it’s empty.  She and her co-worker walks toward an osprey nest he knows about and sees one of the eaglets flying in the distance.  It soon tired of flying and joins its sibling who had gone un-noticed sitting on a high voltage tower.   It was an awesome feeling seeing two new additions to our National bird population.