Eagles Among Us....

I had always heard stories about eagles taking lambs and even small calves. Frankly, I didn't believe it. After this afternoon, I am going to have to re-think this idea.
Charlie, Neil and I were working over at the barn today. The boys were working on moving the lambs to outside pens and I was working in the kitchen/milkroom/soap shop. The place is just a general mess and we were trying to clean and organize.

I was inspecting the clean up job that Charlie was doing in the lamb pens. All the garage doors were wide open letting in the sun and fresh air. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement of a low flying object.
A fully mature Bald Eagle was cruising the barnyard! He glided past us and perched in one of the trees on the edge of the pond. I was ecstatic and realized that I didn't have my camera. My cell phone camera stinks so I called over to the house and asked Seth to bring me the digital. Of course, by the time he found it and got over to the barn, the eagle was long gone but not before he cruised over the lamb pens. He landed in one of the large trees nearby and was really checking out how we had things set up...... Holy Cow--- we could have a situation here. I am hoping the pens are too close for him to feel comfortable swooping down into. Looks like I better think about some kind of netting over the tops.

The good news is that Rosie was not happy that he was hanging around and she let him know in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome. He flew off across the cow pasture and I learned a valuable lesson about leaving the camera at home. This is the second time that I have missed getting a picture of him/her. 

Since I had the camera, I decided to take a few shots of the barnyard.

Future garden compost. Charlie and Neil managed to get it all cleaned out. I left the youngest pen of lambs in the barn in what I call the "transition pen". It has an outside run so they can get used to the weather before going out for good. The other four pens are empty and drying out. Kind of quiet in there now.

These guys were less than happy with their new accomodations. It is much healthier for them to be outside than in the barn. Cleaner for all us, too.

And finally.........

Need I say more?? She is moving so slowly that we are just letting her free range around the house. A watched pot never boils.......