Mike in the Wild

I wasn't back from my Alaska cruise much longer than a week when I found myself driving through Western Colorado.  The snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains' San Juan Range lay behind me, the canyons and deserts surrounding Moab in Utah straight ahead.  In between stretched miles of rangeland and crop fields.  Red-winged blackbirds were easy to identify as they flew manically between their perches on fenceposts and power lines.  But it was one lone, swarthy bird, especially large and still, sitting in a leafless tree on the side of the road, that quite suddenly grabbed my attention.  I would later be thrilled to discover it was my first ever sighting of a golden eagle. In my photos and on the internet over the next several days, I obsessed over ceres, boots, and napes, a few of the details that would confirm my sighting was indeed this raptor.  The time I spent analyzing the pictures was infinitely longer than the minute I spent slowing down my speeding SUV, t...