Watching an active bald eagle nest is a real learning experience. The first day we saw the nest and two of the three adult eagles, we knew we needed to learn more about bald eagles and their habits. Internet, here we come. One of the sites we found was: baldeagleinfo.com.

Our next stop was the local offices of Texas Parks and Wildlife. Wildlife biologist Dale Schmidt was very helpful. From the information gained, we came up with some basics. All adult bald eagles have white heads and it is not easy to tell the difference between males and females even though females are the larger of the two. Three adults being at one nest is not normal. In fact, three adults at one nest is very rare. Eaglets, or baby eagles as we called them, do not have a white head until they reach four or five years old. Eagles have a lifespan of 30 to 35 years. Eaglets make their first flight when they are 10-13 weeks old.

The last week in January we noticed a change in the behavior of the adults which seemed to indicate they were feeding young down in the nest. When we first saw the two eaglets that hatched in the Llano County Highway 29 nest, they were just little gray balls of fuzzy down. Their gray soon changed to brown, and these not so majestic-looking eaglets soon captured our attention and our lens.

There seemed to be two things that were the center of attention for those two eaglets: exercise those wings and eat, eat, eat. The adult eagles brought a variety of foods to the nest to share with the eaglets. The foods included fish of various species and sizes, turtles, birds, and rodents. Fish, however, seemed to be the favorite for this nest right on the banks of the Llano River.

At first, the exercise for the eaglets was an occasional flap of the wings. As they grew, they included jumping and flapping at the same time. Gradually, they began to make it from one side of the nest to the other. Later, they added height and then more height to those nest crossings. The scariest day we ha ...

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