Hi Laurelin and All! I read about the BE that frequents the Park Diner near the downtown area in Binghamton. Have you ever tried seeing one there? I fished the Rockbottom Dam as a kid and can easily understand why this area would be such a great place for a BE to forage for fish. Although I have a boat my son and I came across a BE while fishing from a shore area last year. We fished there at least once or twice a week and at first it would fly away and then we realized if we carefully came upon the area it would stay. We could get within less than 150 feet away at times and although their diet is more of the dead fish variety I swear it would sit there thinking, "How in the heck are these guys catching all of those Fish?" One day it flew about 20 to 25' over my head. My son couldn't believe it. I told him it was checking out the tackle I was using :>)

Around here bald eagles are a dime a dozen. Hard to believe they were on the endangered species list. The river attracts them here. We are on a raptor migration flyway and in the fall the audubon society has a raptor count at Franklin Mountain. Last year they decided to turn a dream into a reality and put GPS trackers on three golden eagles they caught. It was somewhat hard to track these birds because they often went into areas that didn't have any reception for the GPS. They know that one bird died. They believe it died after eating from a pile of dead wild pigs that the state is trying to eradicate. The pigs were killed with lead bullets. It appears the bird died from lead poisoning after feasting on dead pigs left in a pile. So actually the tracking was a success even though the bird died because it revealed a significant hazard that these birds face. There is now a greater push in this area to get the government and hunters to change the bullets they use to something nontoxic. And because hunters eat the meat they kill with these bullets they certainly would benefit too by using nontoxic bullets. They also hope to use the GPS info to map the bird's route so wind turbines won't be placed where they can endanger migrating golden eagles.

I took my first winter trip to the Catskills today hoping to see some eagles.I checked a couple of places I've seen them before. NOTHING. I drove route 10 from Deposit up several miles along the reservoir NOTHING. As I was driving back something caught my attention on the dam. I turned around and went back to check it out. On the dam there is a service road. Along the road are concrete post. To my surprise there were 10 eagles sitting on these post. 5 mature and 5 immature. That change my record of ten different eagles in a week to ten in a day . The trip was a last minute thought. I didn't have my cameras with me

Where do you live? I've been hearing the cranes at night, flying overhead. They are LOUD!