Look at my sweet Birdie.  Doesn’t she have a fine profile?  I love the curve of her nose, her enormous ears, and all that soft, silky fur.  She is a fine specimen indeed.  It’s funny, too, even after nearly fifteen years (her birthday is March 4th!), I never grow tired of watching her.  Playing, sleeping, running in the yard, it’s always a pleasure to see her happy.  Unhappy is quite another matter, but I won’t get into that!

In other bird watching news, I had the FINEST (all caps for serious emphasis) sighting from my back window this past Thursday afternoon.  I was walking by and saw something high in a treetop, a slight white glimmer of movement.  My heart leapt!  Could it be?  I turned back and stopped, focusing my eyes.  It sure looked like it.

I whooped and hollered down the stairs,  “Oh my goodness!  Oh my goodness!” I grabbed the phone and the binoculars as fast as humanly possible and bolted back up the stairs.  Imagine my excitement when I learned my hunch was absolutely correct.  There was indeed a Bald Eagle atop a tree, no more than a hundred yards from me.  I could see its regal gaze scanning the horizon, the beautiful white feathers, the golden beak, the lovely eyes.  I called the hubster, and I spent the next few minutes detailing the eagle’s every move.

“It’s turning his head, yikes almost 360 degrees!”

“It’s moving it’s wings.  Wow, it’s so big!”

“I think it’s looking right at me.”

“The crows are coming!  They’re cawing, but this guy isn’t paying one iota of attention to them, no matter how close they get!”

“Oh my goodness, Buddy, I’m watching a Bald Eagle from our back window!”

In all, I probably watched it for ten joyful minutes, repeating that last sentence about five times.  It then left it’s perch and flew right over our house, so close I could see individual feathers.  I’d like to think it was a “Hello Colleen, I saw you, too,” gesture.  Whatever it was, I could not have been happier (well, maybe if I could have taken a photo, but our camera cannot zoom like that), and I certainly won’t ever look at that tree in the same way again.