Puffy clouds floated across the brilliant blue sky...
The water was just choppy enough to make it interesting...
A beautiful male Mute Swan was swimming off the opposite shore...
Just gorgeous.
We stood admiring the view as the cold wind whipped across the lake. There wasn't a lot of bird activity. A few Canada Geese were on the shore to the right of us, a flock of Bufflehead flew over, and three Great Blue Heron were way over on the other side. The temps were dropping so we decided to take a few more shots and head home. Suddenly we spotted a large bird soaring pretty high up, looked closely, and saw that it was a gorgeous adult Bald Eagle! The sun made his white head feathers just glow. He came closer and closer, but then turned and flew off over the trees. In our wishing for him to fly close enough for a shot, we managed to navigate right to the waters mucky edge. I wear Birkenstocks all year so I was fretting over the fact that my feet were half-way sunk in the cold muck. I heard Zak say 'Uh-oh, there's it's mate', looked up and here is both a male and female swan heading quickly toward us. Here I am, camera around my neck, feet in the muck, trying to slowly back away from a huge male swan (in full breeding presentation, so he looked HUGE) that decided that we were there to harm his female.
So we thought.
As I was avoiding eye contact and slowly backing away I noticed the Canada Geese spooked to the right of me. So did the Great Blues. Then the Bufflehead and Mallards.
It's amazing how you notice everything in great detail when you bird isn't it?
By this time the swan have both positioned themselves about two feet from us and are looking toward the sky. There doesn't seem to be any hostility... they made eye contact with us and began to eat at the waters edge near our feet. Every few seconds they would look at the sky toward the left and hiss.
We took a few pics thinking they were just very friendly swan.
After about fifteen minutes we turned once again to leave and the swan followed us almost frantically. This was really strange and I started to worry that the park rangers might think we were illegally feeding them.
The rest of the lake had become strangely quiet too...
Suddenly three large birds appeared :)
Mr. Bald Eagle was cooking supper this evening and evidently a large bird at the lake was just what he had on the menu. He had spotted his dinner choice the first time he flew over. I guess dining in was an option too because he brought his family along with him this time.
We watched as they slowly circled the lake. What a glorious sight to behold...
By this time I thought the swan were going to climb into our arms! All photo taking had ceased. We were in protective mode I guess. The swan would look at us, the sky, back to us again... and edge closer and closer to us.
These weren't just friendly swan...
These were extremely intelligent swan :)
They weren't headed in to attack us, they were heading in for the protection that we as humans could provide for them.
They knew that the predators circling their lake would not approach people, so they wanted to be as close to us as they possibly could be.
I've heard of birds behaving like this before, but I've never witnessed it first hand. I've found that there are times where you can look deep into a bird's eyes and almost feel what they are thinking. Their eyes give them a voice that we can understand if we look and listen closely. This is the reason I photograph so many birds with their eyes in focus :)
When the threat was gone, our friends once again looked into our eyes... the male fluffed his magnificent feathers (a beautiful sound in and of itself)...
they both bowed their heads to us...
and they slowly swam away :)
