Eagles and a Rainbow

It's been a week for eagles here on the farm. For three mornings an adult Bald Eagle sat atop our big snag for several hours. On one of those mornings, between rain showers, he was sunlit... and accompanied by a rainbow. I grabbed my camera and tried to get them in the same photo but they were too far apart. Even when I only got a part of the rainbow with the eagle, the bird was too far away to be visible. Here is the eagle atop our snag.

A closer look...

And here is the rainbow.

The snag is behind the machine shop in this photo of eagle (invisible) and part of the rainbow.

The eagle was not impressed by the rainbow. Something on the ground caught its attention.

The majestic bird eventually flew off without finding any prey here. It has not returned for the last two days.

This morning, another eagle fly in... a juvenile, just one year old I would guess. Now look at the thin top of the snag that is next to the thick top where the adult eagle is sitting.

The young eagle tried to land on that skinny stick. Not once, but half a dozen times. Each time, a pair of mallards that had been frightened off our pond by my husband's sudden arrival at the barn, where I was milking goats, circled the eagle, flying as low, apparently, as they dared. The eagle failing to land on the skinny tip, flew out and circled back to try again. The mallards again flew over the eagle. I could only guess they were trying to scare it off. (Or maybe they were, like Johnny and me, laughing at the silly bird.) The eagle paid them no attention as it was apparently determined to land on that skinny stick. Each time the eagle tried to set down on the stick, the mallards circled around over its head. Finally the young bird gave up and flew to a nearby fir tree, where it landed on the very top, bending the tip of the tree. The mallards flew upstream and disappeared.  The young eagle soon left that unsteady perch and flew I know not where.

I have seen just-fledged Barn Owls have issues landing, but I have never seen an eagle, that surely must be nearly a year old, with so little awareness of how big a perch it needs. I wish I'd had my camera with me this morning.