There was a bald eagle a week or so ago in a tree on Cedar Ridge Road, New Paltz, just where the road connects with route 208. I think it had heard about my feeders and had come to check them out, but didn't realize until it got here that I don't have any with trout in them, only seeds.
A note regarding fur rather than feathers: At one point this winter when there was a good deal of snow on the ground, a muskrat was visiting my yard. I counted 12 sets of tracks, I suppose six trips coming and going. He was going under the feeders, but he seemed to be grazing on the grass there that the birds had exposed while they were scratching for seeds, rather than eating the fallen seeds. There's a very small stream running through the woods on back of my lot, which enters the wetlands by the railtrail a quarter mile along. My stream I think is much too small to support a muskrat, it must live in the wetlands, and I was surprised that it did not find exposed grass closer to the wetlands than my yard. He'd maybe already eaten everything more convenient to his den? GAT George A. Thompson Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
