[I posted this in our neighborhood’s online list-serve site last Sunday night.]

April 9, 2017

Dear Neighbors of Lake Needwood,

I’d like to report the arrival of some avian visitors to the lake this spring.

My wife and I spotted a fledgling eagle before dusk on Sunday, just north of the Needwood Road bridge over the lake.  It was resting in the top branches of a tall beech tree along the shore, basking for a good long while in the beaming, warm rays of the sun still shining above the tree line. As the sun dipped further, the fledgling launched itself into flight, soaring tentatively around the shores of the lake until heading north, over Rock Creek.

Some of you may know of the eagle nest at Lake Frank which has housed returning eagle pairs for some years now.  This fledgling likely originated there.  To learn more about the behavior of newly fledged eagles, I learned a lot from:

https://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/eagle/annual/facts_fledglings.html

A half hour later, a great blue heron soared above us at the same spot.  Its course was a straight line across the lake, barely twitching a feather to adjust his route.  Its magnificent wingspan took our breath away.

The main attraction, though, was a pair of resident geese swimming in harmony together around the perimeter of the lake calmly seeking a nesting site for the night.  Their graceful gliding together in complex inter-weavings through the waters at dusk was poetry in motion.  They provided quite an inspiration for those among us trying to live together in harmony.

John Bayerl, Kipling Road