Dale Matson
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Millerton Lake is home to a few resident bald eagles and several other bald eagles that overwinter there, migrating from Great Slave Lake in Canada. It is also home to one resident pair of golden eagles. The one half million-acre foot reservoir was formed by constructing a dam on the San Joaquin River near Friant CA.
My original intent was to photograph the resident pair of golden eagles known to frequent a cliff area on the Madera County CA side of Millerton Lake (Fresno County CA is on the other side of the lake).
My wife Sharon and I found a way to access the site via a difficult off-trail one-mile hike with about 800’ of gain outbound. On our visits we noticed the eagles arrived about 10:00 am daily because the winter thermals along the cliff made for effortless soaring in search of food. Their perches at the top of the cliff, allowed them to view the rolling pastureland to the north where they could hunt for rabbits, snakes, mice, voles and squirrels. They could also look down on Millerton Lake on the south side of the cliff and spot various waterfowl. I observed them catching coots which are easy prey for an eagle. In short, this was an ideal location for these golden eagles.
We also noticed that one golden briefly landed in an existing nest between the cliff and lake in a Bull Pine. This was the end of January and we decided on weekly visits initially to take more photos and determine if they would raise chicks there.
It wasn’t until mid-March that we observed two eggs on the nest from our view site about 150 meters away and above the nest. On April 9th we saw the two small chicks for the first time. Even with my 800mm camera lens (cropped full frame) the chicks were very small.
On April 30th, much to my amazement, a smaller additional chick appeared in the nest along with the other two chicks. At the time, I could only guess that I had not noticed the 3rd egg or chick previously because the nest configuration has a hidden area even when viewed from above.
As May began to unfold, these white fuzzy chicks continued to grow and change color but there was something not quite right about the development of these three chicks. Why was the runt changing to a darker color before the other two chicks? Shouldn’t the other chicks be changing color sooner? Additionally, the runt seemed to have the most energy. He was walking around the nest while the other siblings slept most of the time. The runt also had a rounder head and much smaller beak.
By mid-May I began to realize that we were not looking at an eagle chick at all. If this was the case, then that opened up the original mystery once again. Where did this chick come from? By the following week, we had identified the chick as a red-tailed hawk. I went on the internet and found a case of a hawk being raised by bald eagles on Vancouver Island. Well, how did that hawk get in the eagle nest? The experts agreed that the best theory was that a hawk nest had been raided by a bald eagle and two chicks had been brought back to the eagle nest. One “disappeared” and the other was raised by the eagles along with their three chicks.
Hopefully, that would be the case with this chick. The chick seemed to be doing fine and getting along with the eagle chicks. They often slept alongside one another. However, the hawk chick did stand on the nest apart from the other two quite often.
I could always tell when a parent was about to fly-by because all three chicks would look up in the same direction. I had to be reminded that even eagle and hawk chicks have eagle and hawk eyes. They saw the parents before we did even when we used our 10 power binoculars. The nestlings also watched us as we sat watching them. It was a kind of mutual observation experience. We only observed one food delivery which lasted about a minute before the adult flew away. The larger eagle nestling ate first, the smaller eagle then ate and the hawk got what remained as the eagles slept again.
As these chicks continued to develop and grow, the eagles were pretty much on a sleep/eat cycle with occasional walks around the nest. The hawk was the hyperactive child moving around quite a bit with lots of head bobbing. The hawk began to do a lot of wing flapping too as the eagle chicks looked on. They had another 20 plus days until they fledged. The eagle chicks in this nest were probably about the same age and hawks fledge in about 45 days. while the goldens fledge in about 65 days.
On May 25th we visited again and when we first arrived, the hawk was no longer in the nest or the nest tree. The hawk had fledged. Later, the hawk flew in and landed on a horizontal branch above the nest
There are about another two weeks until the two golden eagle nestlings fledged but that is the falling action in a true wildlife story never before documented.
