Little Big Bird

Nobody wants to see a junior eagle (but don't tell my camera)

In all my years producing videos focused on my favorite topic — “Beauty & Nature” — I’ve never once found a spot for a shot of a juvenile bald eagle. Knowing from experience how viewers will oohh! and aahh! at the sight of majestic adults doing, well, majestic things, I’ve always spared myself the mehhhs of indifference that juvies inevitably inspire.

But my camera loves junior eagles. And lots of other less-than-majestic beauties, too. Multiply my obsessive predilection to point a camera at anything pretty in nature, times twenty-plus years living on the Oregon Coast continuously surrounded by beauty in nature, and you can begin to imagine my absolute need for this website:

At last I can share the zillions of clips I have like this that, until now, no one but me could ever see.

This scruffy youngster, attending a coveted coastal herring run, has his head on a swivel as he watches silvery fish flash beneath his feet while ducking aggressive gulls dive-bombing from above and keeping tabs with hungry eyes on nearby flocks of diving ducks. I love to watch the wheels begin to turn behind young eagles’ eyes as they strive to overcome their handicap of inexperience to learn firsthand — without any remedial help from mom or dad — how to turn latent dining opportunities like this into a tangible meal or two.

So that’s it — just a short, pretty video of a pretty young bird living a beautiful life in a beautiful place. That alone, plus the ability now to share it with you, more than justifies the effort of shooting, editing and posting it here. For at every step throughout this process, I got to “be there” on Nature’s Coast once again:

And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

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