Lynn Barber's Birding Blog

I only birded in the Potter Marsh area today, and there weren’t many birds around.

At the end of the boardwalk two Bald Eagles sat together, the only birds I saw there. Usually the only place I see eagles at the marsh is in this same area in the large trees near or at their nest as viewed east from the boardwalk.

Then, as I walked back to my car today I periodically heard a mysterious disembodied squeaky calling sound that moved about unseen apparently low in the distant deciduous trees. Although I will probably never know for sure, it could have been the Northern Goshawk that I saw out there a couple of weeks ago. When I listened to the tape back at my car, the sounds were similar to the recorded goshawk calls but I don’t know. So often I’m driven by the need to know all the birds that I see and hear. I like the idea of a mystery bird there. I’m sure it will lure me back to see if I can solve the mystery.

But for today, instead of waiting around in the cold to try to find out what it was, I drove behind the marsh on the old Seward Highway. I guess I’d never actually looked back from this old road toward where the eagles and their nest is but by chance I spotted it and them today, much closer than I normally saw them. Immediately, the realization that I was seeing the eagles from the other side came to me and immediately after that the words of “Both Sides Now” came to me.