A Season with Eagles

For one incredible season, Dr. Scott Nielsen sat wedged in a blind high on the broken-off top of a massive white pine. From this 105-foot-high observation platform, Nielsen studied a pair of bald eagles from their return to their northern Wisconsin nest, to their nesting, to the eaglets' fledging in late summer. A Season with Eagles is a dramatic record of that spring, summer, and fall. With all the required federal and state permissions, Nielsen constructed the blind just outside one of the critical buffer zones for the eagles' territory, one-eighth mile from the eyrie. From there he was poised with his camera and pen. Part of the government's instructions mandated that he not disturb the eagles: He had to be in his blind before dawn and leave after sunset. Nielsen's near-round-the-clock observations gave us a rare and accurate account of the eagles in action. His photos, made with a fifty-pound, 2500-millimeter telephoto lens bolted to his observation tree, are treasures for bird-lovers. Nielsen captures the next-building rituals, defensive maneuvers, courtship and mating behaviors, and the growing-up stages of the eales' two young. A Season with Eagles is for anyone who has seen - or wished for - the breathtaking sight of an eagle soaring overhead.