Highland and Augusta Counties, VA 1/21/2020

All photos are © Marshall Faintich

It's been a year since Walt Childs and I have seen Golden Eagles, so we braved the cold weather and made the two hour drive from my house in Crozet to the Blue Grass Valley in Highland County. Walt usually meets at my house at 9:00 a.m., and we go from there, but the night before decided to start out an hour earler. The forecast was for 19 degrees in the Blue Grass Valley at 10:00 a.m., and that's what is was when we arrived at 10:00 a.m., but at least the winds were less than 5 mph.

Highland County

As soon as we turned off of Route 220 from Monterey, we saw a flock of Coldfinches :-) (American Goldfinches). We spent four hours in the Blue Grass Valley, saw six Red-tailed Hawks, six American Kestrels, and, well, read on.

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Red-tailed Hawk

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Red-tailed Hawks

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Red-tailed Hawks

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Red-tailed Hawks

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American Kestrel

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American Kestrel

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American Kestrel

We were on Wimer Mountain Road at 10:30 when Walt spotted an American Kestrel to the east side of the road. I got out of the car to take a few photos, but was pretty much looking into the sun. All of a sudden, a large bird flew right over the Kestrel and over our heads. It was an adult Golden Eagle! It circled high up for a few minutes on the west side of the road before moving on. The only close-up photos I got of it were severely backlit from the morning sun, but I am not complaining!

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

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Golden Eagle

Well, that was really exciting! Had we left from my house at our ususal time, we would have missed it. We drove around looking to re-locate it or see other eagles. When we were on Hevener Road, we stopped when we saw a perched, juvenile Bald Eagle that was moving into its Basic I subadult plumage.

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Bald Eagle

After a couple of minutes, this eagle turned a flew down into the valley, and all hell broke loose. There were birds everywhere. Walt and I each thought that we saw five eagles, all being attacked by a large flock of Ravens and a few Crows. We were looking ino the sun, and there was so much action that counting the birds was difficult. My photos show four different eagles, and three of them were juvenile to subadult in plumage. One of the Bald Eagles was carrying something in its talons.

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Bald Eagle

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Three Bald Eagles and Common Raven

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Bald Eagles

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Bald Eagle and Common Raven

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Three Bald Eagles and Common Ravens

When I processing my photos, I saw that a fourth eagle was a juvenile Golden Eagle! And this one was a variant without the white patches on the underside of its wings.

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Golden Eagle and Common Raven

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Golden Eagle and Common Raven

We continued down along Blue Grass Valley Road, and saw an adult Bald Eagle.

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Bald Eagle

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Bald Eagle

We drove back looking for more eagles, but didn't see any. At this point, we had seen 18 to 20 avian species, and were pumped after seeing all of these eagles, so we decided to head for home. On our way to Monterey on Route 220, we passed two Red-shouldered Hawks on the power lines.

Augusta County

As we neared Staunton on Route 250, we decided to try for the Short-eared Owl that had been reported mutiple times along Bell's Lane. Each time either or both of us had looked for the owl, we were unsuccessful. We soon saw our 7th Red-tailed Hawk, a pair of American Kestrels (number 7 and 8 for the day), and a male, "Gray Ghost" Northern Harrier.

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Red-tailed Hawk

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American Kestrels

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Northern Harrier

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Northern Harrier

And then, once again, we got lucky this day.

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Short-eared Owl

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Short-eared Owl

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Short-eared Owl

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Short-eared Owl

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Short-eared Owl

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Short-eared Owl

On the way back from there, we spotted two more Red-tailed Hawks and another Red-shouldered Hawk along I-64. It was a good birding day.


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