“But where was this?” “My Lord, upon the platform where we watch.”

Last weekend I took Owen and Felix to the bay. It was late afternoon and already almost dark, but Felix has gone full throttle into birding over the past month and I wanted to show him some of the waterfowl before the bay freezes over. 

We hiked up one our regular Lucien Morin park routes but then turned back north to climb to the top of a hill that overlooks Empire Boulevard and the bay where we would usually go down into the wetlands and the park. We were skirting the top of the ridge between K2 Brewing and BarBill, and even as the sun continued to sink we could see hundreds of gulls sitting out on the mud flats where the water had gone down and left the winter ooze behind.

It was cold and windy up as high as we were, but Felix dutifully searched with his binoculars and his Junior Birder book while Owen poked around in the scrubby brush with his metal detector. 

I helped Felix find some ducks, identify a couple of gull species, and then pulled out my telescope. The boys were climbing up and down the dirt escarpments now, and Owen was whooping with excitement about having found a cross carved into an old stump. (I think he was enjoying the echo that his voice made in the hollow space before the tree line started.)

“Hey boys, come look at this!”

I had looked right past them the first time I looked over the area, but smack in my telescope now were two bald eagles perched on some grounded driftwood. 

Owen shrieked so loud that I was afraid he’d scare them off. Felix immediately looked for the bald eagles in his Birder book. 

“Dad, guess what! There’s something for you to know! I think that one of those bald eagles…is a genitive bald eagle!” 

“A genitive bald eagle?”

“Yeah, you can see its head isn’t all the way white yet, but it isn’t a baby anymore either. Yup, it’s a genitive.” 

“Oh, you mean a juvenile—“

“You’re right, Felix! It is a genitive bald eagle. I LOVE HAVING ADVENTURES!!!”