@Tuoichen's Mt. Pleasant Cemetery Eagle Blog
The newest entry will be put on top of this blog.
November 22, 2024
I saw one of the eagles fly to the nest with a twig in beak!
November 18, 2024
Two adult eagles!
November 17, 2024
Eagles have been back!
During the last week eagles have been spotted at the aerie. Neighbor Beth saw a juvenile. Just now, at dusk, an adult was sitting in the tree.
July 28, 2024, afternoon
Both juveniles are flying at times. One of them seems to be taking longer trips way out of sight from the aerie.
A possible solution to the "one eagle too many" mystery could be that the dead bird was an interloper and that we just did not see juvenile #1 for a couple of days.
July 28, 2024
There were still two juveniles in the tree. They are easy to distinguish. One has a prominent white patch in the middle of his chest. That one is the "survivor" as determined from my large stack of photos.
July 27, 2024
A mystery: one too many! As of 3:15 p.m. there are three eagles sitting in the tree, one adult and two juveniles.
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My apologies for posting the wrong QR code on the telephone pole. No malware, though, just a dumb mistake.=======================================================
July 23, morning
The juvenile IS FLYING. I watched fly a loop from the tree over street and houses and back to the tree.
July 22, evening.
For the first time, I saw No. 2 fly from branch to branch.
July 21, evening
The surviving juvenile was sitting on a branch. I have not seen him/her do much.
July 18, afternoon
Sad news: One of the juveniles died. The body was found under the nest on cemetery grounds around 3 p.m. The remains will go to the Burke Museum.
My hunch is that the dead baby is the more active and adventuresome of the two.
The survivor, around 4 p.m., July 18, 2024
July 18, 2024, morning
I have last seen both juveniles on the 14th. This morning, one of them was still there, sitting on a branch as before. No. 1 juvenile likely fledged on the 15th of July. To my knowledge, or guess, they laid eggs about the middle of March. The little ones hatched at some time in the first half of May.
July 18, 2024, complete with harassing crow
July 13, morning
The situation with the eagles seems unchanged. But who should I find on the cemetery but Mr. (Mrs?) Wile. E. Coyote?
July 12, 2024, morning
The same situation: The two youngsters were sitting on their respective branches off the nest, waiting to be fed.
July 10, 2024, evening
Fledging has happened or is imminent. Both youngsters are still close to the nest, but one of them must have flown at least a little bit.
July 6, 20240
The youngsters are still doing the same things, resting, eating and flapping their mighty wings. This afternoon, they vocalized a fair bit. It's like a high-pitched squeal.
The crows hate the eagles as much as ever.
Both eaglets flap their wings.
June 30, 2024
Fledging seems to be coming closer. Today, I found one of the youngsters on a branch just off the nest. They are still wobbly on their legs, though.
June 28, 2024
Both eaglets are healthy and active, and they are BIG! They also have excellent bedside manners. You can hear the drawn-out, high-pitched squeals of the eaglets.
June 24, 2024
June 17th, 2024
The eaglets are making progress. Yesterday, I saw the first hop with both legs, wings spread. Both eaglets have been active, more on their legs and on the rim of the nest. Event though, the wings still look not completely formed to me.
June 16, 2024
June 15, 2024
June 9th, 2024
I finally got photos of both chicks. They are quite active. There wing plumage is still not fully formed.
June 5th, 2024
The chick(s) look more like eagles; the wings have real feathers.
May 29th, 2024
Habemus pullos!
(With apologies to the Catholic Church and thanks to Google Translate)
How wrong I was ! And how little idea I had, and still have, how eagle raise chicks. Obviously, raising chicks is compatible with doing nothing for an hour or more at a time. Tell that to any human mom, or any hummingbird mom, and you'll get an earful or more.
Anyhow, our eagles have two chicks as clearly documented by our friend and highly gifted and versatile professional photographer Marcus Donner (marcusdonner.com). I took the first photo showing a tiny bit of a chick on May 23rd. The chicks are active, and at least one is already fairly large. Anyone can see the chicks - but it does take PATIENCE. The chicks are not visible when they are simply sitting or lying down in the nest. There is exactly one spot from which to see the chicks through the foliage. It is in the bend where Fulton St. curves around into 8th Avenue W.
May 23, 2024. Do you see the little head?
May 27: They are guarding the nest, but there is no frantic feeding activity.
May 29, 2024
The wings are still mostly covered with down.
The trailing feathers still look like sticks.
Hooray! The youngster is already potty trained!
May 10th, 2024
We are back after an "epic" trip to Namibia. After watching the eagles for the last few days, I am convinced that they do not have chicks. They are just sitting on the nest or sitting on branches. If they had chicks, they would be very busy feeding those hungry little monsters.
April 13th, 2025
They are still sitting on eggs with occasional change of the sitter. Hatching is expected in a week or so. Fingers crossed!
April 2nd, 2024
They are definitely sitting on eggs, or maybe babies? One of the birds has been sitting and sitting and sitting. Tonight there was a fair bit of movement of wings and bodies in the nest. It is now 7:35 pm, it is getting dark, and I see one white head with a yellow beak in the nest.
Going back through photos, the eagles might have been sitting on eggs since about the middle of March.
Sitting on the nest... April 2, 2024, 2:40 pm
Guarding, April 1. You can't see the other bird in the nest.
April 1st, 2024
Our neighbor B is convinced that they have been nesting for maybe two weeks. She has a better view of the nest than we. I concur.
Whoever is sitting on the nest is mostly not visible unless she/he is moving. It's trying; mostly they do little; one just sits on the nest and the other on a branch nearby. But B has seem them switch roles.
This is not an April Fools Day joke.
March 13, at dusk
False Alarm! They are not nesting. They were sitting on branches not far from the nest for an hour or so. At least one of them spent the night in or at the nest.
March 13, 2024
As soon as I wrote the last note, I began seeing eagles just about at any time of day. They have been around the nest a lot. And they may have DONE IT after all. As of this evening, I very much suspect that they are actually nesting. One of the problems of stating the above with certainty is that any eagle(s) sitting IN the nest is (are) not visible from the street (Fulton / 8th).
The eagles seem to be sensitive to approach toward the aerie from the cemetery grounds.
From the corner of 8th & Fulton
March 7, 2024
Two or one eagle(s) have been around at times, mostly in the evening but also in the afternoon. I haven't seen them in the morning. They have been sitting near the nest for hours at times, but they have not DONE anything significant, yet.
January 14, 2024
Today I saw TWO eagles at/near the nest for the first time.
Hello Neighbors: You can add to the evolving story by adding comments to this blog.
January 5, 2024
Eagle(s) have been around our neighborhood probably just about every day. I have not seen more than one eagle near the nest. This morning, one circled low over 10th West / Fulton St. The following photos are from yesterday.
December 23, 2023
Tonight, at sunset, I saw an eagle above the nest at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery for the first time since last May.
May 29, 2023
I thought that eagle activity was over because we had not see any for a month or so. Part of the problem is that we cannot see the nest proper anymore from our house because of the full foliage that has emerged. Then today, around 5 p.m., I saw an eagle fly into "the" tree followed by a big ruckus among the local crow population.
April 28, 2023
This morning there was quite a bit of action at the aerie tree. One of the eagles was sitting on a branch, being viciously attacked not only by crows but also by an osprey. A bit of the action can be seen at https://youtu.be/bIB31qUuOoI.
April 24, 2023
We are confused. The eagles are around a lot. But they are not DOING anything major. They sit on their tree for an hour or hours, and then they are gone for hours.
April 20, 2023
April 23, 2023; from our kitchen window. The bigger female clearly shows up relative to the male.
A few minutes later from closer by the tree; female now on top.
April 3, 2023
The eagles seem to have been hanging around the aerie more at least during the last few days.
I have not seen them nest-building or do any other activity that would hint at the start of breeding. I saw one of them fly off and come back with something edible. Small critters' life at Mount Pleasant Cemetery seem hazardous.
Later toward the evening, the eagles were absent. While waiting for them, I watched another feathered resident, a chirpy Bewick's wren.
Eventually, I got hungry and went home. From our kitchen window I saw the moon rise above one of the eagles.
March 15, 2023
The eagles have been around at times. I still don't know if they spend the night at their nest. Yesterday, I saw at least one of them at the nest when it was already quite dark. But then he/she flew away.
(The limitations of taking pictures at night with an hand-held digital camera are quite obvious.)
March 3, 2023
The eagles had been at their nest at least once during the last few days. Today, it got quite dramatic!
After a while of watching, I noticed that
there were three eagles on the aerie tree instead of just two. The two eagles
in and close to the nest were calling in a way I had never heard before
and which is not entirely like any recording in Sibley's or Merlin. The
third eagle was higher up in the tree.
After a while longer, the eagle near the nest (the male?) lifted off and
vigorously attacked No. 3. Those two eagles flew off into the distance.
See also https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150172821 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVSATJKQkEI.
Both of the two eagles at the nest were vocalizing in a way I had not heard before. Their calls were unlike any of the recordings in Sibley's app or Merlin. I made a new entry in iNaturalist where you can hear the calling (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150172821).
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The following segment of this blog has time increasing downward.
January 5, 2023
A pair of nesting bald eagles is among the newer (and living 👍) inhabitants of Seattle's Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. I became aware of the eagles around Christmas 2022 but did not see them until January 5, 2023 (photo above). Neighbors in the northwest corner of Queen Anne Hill told me that the eagles had been active around their nest tree since June 2022. (Updated 1/8/23.)
The cemetery is one of the older ones in Seattle and holds the graves and ashes of some of the first generation white "nobility" of Seattle as well as many other notable persons including
Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill who was executed (murdered) by the State of Utah through a firing squad (
https://www.historylink.org/File/966).
Mt. Pleasant Cemetery is especially pleasant in the quiet of the morning of a snow day.
(February 6, 2017)
January 6, 2023
With much better light than in the late afternoon of 1/5/23 (above), I watched the eagle pair hard at work building their nest. They were doing so off and on.
One of the birds (the male, I assume), flies off, picks off a branch, circles a few times (for effect?) and brings the stick to the nest. The spouse (the female?) puts the stick into the exactly right spot.
January 16, 2023
I already thought that the eagle nest would turn out to be a non-event. But then one eagle showed up on the later afternoon of a gorgeous January 16. I ran out to the cemetery with my camera and took pictures in the slowly waning evening light.
The German word for cemetery is Friedhof - yard of peace.
The one eagle did not do anything but majestically sit high on the aerie tree. Some photos taken from a distance show the size of the tree. (Would someone please comment on my idea that it is a cottonwood, possibly a black cottonwood, Populus trichocarpa.)
A red-tailed hawk flew by, too.
January 19, 2023
Apparently, the eagles are at the cemetery off and on. One of them was sitting in a tree near the aerie at about 10:45 a.m. Two hours later it was gone.
February 9, 2023
Since the last entry, I saw one of the eagles near the nest on occasion. Tonight was the first time I saw both of them at the nest.
February 20, 2023
We had seen one or both eagles a few times. But of course we don't monitor the aerie tree constantly. Today, as I was leaving the house for a walk, an eagle flew by with a screaming gull in hot pursuit. I grabbed my camera and found both eagles near the nest. They were definitely watching me carefully as I was taking my photos. The birds did not stay long.
The above two photos show the two eagles. I think that the first one is probably the female. She looks bigger in the top photo under February 20.
On my walk I also saw a cute little merlin.
February 21, 2023
I saw one of the eagles fly to the nest in the evening, grabbed the camera and went out. Both eagles were at the tree. One, likely the male, flew down on a small branch, grabbed it with his talons and thus breaking it off, made a few rounds on wing and then passed the twig onto the female. Is this part of the pair's bonding ritual? A little declaration of love 💕?
For the female's and male's roles in nest building (and more) see, e.g., "The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior" (p. 219; first edition 2001).
I don't know if the birds stayed for the night. But on
February 22-25, 2023
February 22, around 9:30 a.m. they were back. Just before 6 p.m. one eagle flew by and another seemed to fly out of the nest and away.
They have been around at least some time every day.
February 28, 2023
I saw an eagle circle above our hill around 1 p.m. and quickly checked the nest: somebody home! We can see the nest from the back of our house.
In the evening, I again saw an eagle in the air above our area. Shortly after, both eagles were back at the nest. They briefly vocalized.
Hooray! The youngster is already potty trained!
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