Good morning. 🦅🦅🦅

18 September 2026

Yesterday morning, while I was outside tending to my bird feeders, I looked up and noticed something moving through the sky on a path that would take it directly over my backyard. For a split second I wondered—is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it was a very big bird. As I focused on it, I realized it was a bald eagle, and there I stood flat‑footed, a scooper full of seed in my hand and my camera sitting a good hundred feet away inside the back door.

There was no chance of making it inside, grabbing the camera, and getting back out before the eagle passed, so I simply watched. It floated by with that lazy, effortless glide they use when they’re not in any hurry, until it disappeared behind the forest trees. I’ve photographed eagles before, but always at a much greater distance. In my mind’s eye, I can picture the detail I would have captured if I’d had the camera with me—more than what’s in the photograph I’m showing you today, which I took a little over two years ago. That’s how these things tend to go more often than not. It’s just the way of it.

Life is full of missed opportunities—moments you lose for one reason or another. The important thing is not to close yourself off from future opportunities because of early choices. Those mistakes can narrow your path more and more as the years pass. One question that always appears on a job application is your level of education; employers want to know you can read, write, add, and subtract. Another is your criminal history; they don’t want someone who might steal from them. Don’t cut yourself off. Graduate. Stay out of trouble. Keep your future open.

“Opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.” — Andy Rooney

“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened.” - T. S. Eliot

#photo #photography #photographer #wildlife #natur #birds #birding #birdwatching #birdphotography #BaldEagle #morning #opportunity