Wow!

 One of the things that keep us 'birder's' going is every now and then, something unusual happens. You go for days, weeks, months, even, in this case, years, and then all of a sudden....Wow!

Yesterday was one of those 'Wow!' sightings.....

a Golden Eagle right down in the log bay!  Occasionally, over the 25 plus years I've been watching this area, a knowledgeable person has reported a Golden Eagle, most often those who report seeing one have actually just seen a juvenile Bald Eagle. There is no mistaking this one. 

this rear view shows the colour pattern on the tail.

here is another view....

then, just to make things easy to compare, a juvenile Bald Eagle flew down beside the Golden.  The Bald Eagle is on the right, the Golden on the left.

now the juvenile Bald is on the left and the Golden on the right.  The juvenile Bald looks bigger than the Golden because it was a bit closer.  In reality, Golden Eagles are larger than Bald Eagles, although juvenile eagles tend to be larger than fully mature ones.

The Golden Eagle wasn't the only unusual visitor yesterday, a Bonaparte Gull was also there.  We had a few of these earlier in the fall but they are definitely not a common sight here.

another, not so common sight, a bit later in the day was snow.  First of the season and it didn't stay long.

We wandered back over to the log bay, this approximately 4 year old Bald Eagle was enjoying a snack in the snow.

Will end off with an adult Bald Eagle.....