Growing up eagle…

One of the things I thought I’d missed by being up north recently was the eagles at the nest that I have visited in the past.  While I was gone I heard that they had started a new family on a new nest built to replace the one that was lost last year.  That was happy news because last year’s chicks didn’t make it,  And I nearly did miss it, but not quite.  This years eaglet is in his awkward teenaged stage.  Not a fluffy cute chick, and not yet a magnificent eagle.  I arrived to find one of the parents in a nearby tree and the young one on the nest.  And that’s pretty much all that was going on, so after taking quite a few identical photos I had packed up the camera to go home.  That’s when the young one started flapping his wings and hopping around the nest,  It looked like he was going from branch to branch, and I saw plenty of daylight under him as he hopped, so it seemed like he was serious about it.  A teenager feeling his oats.  Like any concerned mother would do, his mother, I assume, flew to the nest and quashed that activity.  And our favorite young eagle was looking his mother in the face and turning his head from side to side looking, to me at least, as if he was trying to get back on her good side.  Nor sure about her, but he made points with me.