Hopefully everyone has seen the morning's snow melt, if you got it at all.

For the first time in 12 years since I've lived here, there were 22 juvenile bald eagles and two adults in the cottonwoods along Ebey Slough between my house at the end of Rivershore Road and the branch of Ebey and the Snohomish mainstem (within about 1/4 mile). There are still a dozen young eagles in the trees across the river now. They are really chatty, not the usual trilling call, but in a way I've not heard before (and our first adults starting nesting here in 2006, so I've been listening to them awhile). They almost sound like they're laughing- I had to get out the scope and make sure it was an eagle making that noise.

I'm wondering if they're here for fish. The river is closed to steelhead fishing because there are so few wild fish forecast to return, but maybe the hatchery fish are on their way up. It's really odd to see this many- the most I've seen is about 4-5 birds.

Their odd call many may be that they are laughing at me. I am 5 plants from processing my bareroot order of a couple hundred this year, but I'm still wrestling with three dozen trees from last year that are still in pots and about a hundred plants that need to move. So as I got snow-showered on and toiled in the mud and rain, they just-well, had a good laugh is what it sounded like. Maybe they were taunting me in eagle-ese with "right plant, right place, dummy"!

Monica Van der Vieren
Snohomish, WA