Oko Wikemna Yamni ake Napcinyunka

Monday, Nov 14 to Sunday, Nov 20, 2016: high 69, low 6

This picture is of a leg of a prairie dog. Here’s the backstory. Cousin Glenn, his friend Marla and i were sitting in the house visiting and saw two bald eagles fly by over the springs heading north. It looked like they were playing or “mock fighting” in the air, twirling and dipping as we watched. Then one circled back and landed on a small bluff outcropping almost directly across the springs from the house. The other one continued north and then west, maybe nearly a mile away, and we’d catch of glimpse of it every once in a while. Eventually we quit watching it and would use the binoculars every once in a while to check out the

one across from the house. That’s when we realized it was eating something. And it ate and ate and ate. We tried taking photos with our cameras but none of then could zoom in close enough to clearly show the eagle. Then suddenly we glimpsed the other eagle coming down the draw from the south again, and as soon as we looked across the springs, the one eating was already airborne. They sort of circled up and flew off to the north. After Glenn and Marla left i walked over to where the eagle was eating to see what remained. The photo above shows right where the eagle stood and consumed its prey. In the center foreground you can see a small plume, and above and to the left of it the red of the leg meat. There was no blood. No mess. Almost nothing. The eagle must have eaten everything, and maybe would have eaten this little bit of leg too except that its partner returned and so it flew away hastily to meet up, leaving behind this small scrap.

The picture below is from the site. If you look closely in the bottom left foreground you can see the red of the meat, and the plume is right at the bottom center. It was amazing to see the two bald eagles! The one must have caught the prairie dog in the town about half a mile east of the house, beyond the ridge in the photo below. And so when the eagles were playing or mock-fighting in the air when we first saw them, perhaps the one without the prairie dog was trying to get it away from the one with it?