Monday, September 5, 2011

Glacier National Park - Day 2

I decided to try something a little different today and instead of heading where all the tourists go, I decided to head up to the northwest side of Glacier today.  This side of the park still shows major signs of the fires from 2003, in which 145,000 acres (approx. ten percent of the park) burned.  It was kind of wild to drive 15 miles up this stretch of road, and see the amount of forest that burned in those files.  I don't even think I can describe just how much forest that is.  You have to see it to believe it!

The nice thing about heading this way, is that you almost feel alone in the park.  It was a lot more relaxing and gave me time to stop as much as I wanted, so I could look around.

As I was passing over one of the rivers, I spotted this eagle sitting in a tree, so thought I would try to get a photo or two. Little did I know that shortly after setting my camera up, I'd get to watch something I'd never seen before.  There was some kind of hawk sitting in another tree further up the river, and he seemed to suddenly decided that he was going to antagonize the eagle.  He just took off from his perch and came straight at him.  He certainly got the eagles attention!  He made 4 or 5 more quick passes and then it was over as fast as it started.  I was surprised the eagle didn't take to the air and go after the hawk.


The attack (or whatever it was) happened fast, but I did manage to catch a couple of pictures of the action. Nothing that would make National Geographic of course, but hopefully fun to look at.


Once the hawk left the area, the eagle kept alert and seemed to be watching for another attack.  I took a lot of photos today, but haven't had time to process any of them yet.  I'll try to get to some more tomorrow and post the best of the bunch from today.

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