Stripes and scratches

Finishing Meripihka's patterns. I also added some scars around the battle damage thing, and touched up some of her upper teeth that were more brown than white.

She might be done, but I might still add one more detail having to do with the backstory I came up with for her name.

Recent eaglefamily portraits

SWFL eagles perching together and being very pretty.

 Mom Harriet with her big babies. (Bonus rainbow lensflare.)

Painting progress

Stripes are coming along nicely, mostly just the tail still left.

Also, I've come up with a name for her - she is Meripihka. Which is the Finnish word for amber, and sounds very pretty in my opinion. I could have just named her Amber, which is pretty, too, but the word in my first language came to mind first. Why any word for amber at all feels appropriate for her I'm sure has to do with her colouring, and amber and JP dinosaurs are quite closely connected, after all.

As for why the raptors would consider that a suitable identifier for her... well, she is a granddaughter of a raptor so adept at climbing trees he named himself after that, so perhaps it's something she's skilled at and fond of doing, too. Perhaps more often than Treeclimber, who might favor different types of trees, this leaves her with drops of resin adorning her claws and scales. Accidental the first few times - but, being the clever girl that she is, she realized the tree goo smell helps mask her scent from prey.

Amber and resin from a living tree are not the same thing, of course, as amber is specifically the fossilized version. But, the Finnish word directly translates as "sea resin", referring to the common place to find amber in Europe. I'm just gonna say the trees one gets stained in resin by climbing are found at the coast of the island, and we'll have the name make sense in the raptors' frame of reference. :D

Tl;dr: Meripihka gets her name from coming up with a new trick to help her at hunting that she discovered by liking to climb the smelly trees by the ocean.

Light tattoo

Two eaglets at the attic

The SWFL eaglets have both made it to the first branch of their nest tree that requires a bit of flying to reach. Warning for closeup of a dead fish in the second to last image of the post.

 E16 left/front, E15 right/back. (Other way around when seen on camera 2 below)

Raptor mani-pedi

Starting the Battle Damage raptor's makeover with painting her claws dark purple. I think it works as a nice contrast to the yellow.

The weather has been really hot and I haven't felt like painting much, just bringing out and putting away the supplies feels like a workout, lol. But my laptop ran out of charge during a thunderstorm, and that was as good an excuse as any to do artsy things not involving a computer for a change.

E15 has fledged!

Or fludged, as leaving the nest tree didn't seem to be the plan just yet, but E15 did great regardless. The fledging happened yesterday, and today E15 is 11 weeks old.
(Link to nestcam)

The big moment. You can find Lady Hawk's video of the fledging here, and in this post are screenshots I took from the livestream on three of the nest's cameras.

Attic exploring with eaglets

Exciting SWFL eagle news: E15 has made it to the attic branch!

E16 standing below, occasionally flapping their wings, too. Both are pretty good at hovering already.

Glowy clouds

Back from raptor vacation, you guys didn't have a photoshoot or anything while I was gone, did you?

I'm adding a new member to one of my toy raptor packs.

The yellow and brown JWFK Battle Damage raptor kind of looks like she could be one of Survivor's grown-up chicks, so that's who she's going to be now. She won't need very drastic repainting, but I'll still spruce her up a bit.

Reuniting with maximum and minidad (okay the size difference isn't that big, but I think the jumping raptors are pretty cute being a bit smol) parents. Grappleclaws is Survivor's chicks' biological father, so the new raptor being yellow can be a trait inherited from him. I'm glad she actually is not as brightly yellow as the photos I'd seen of her made it seem, and this colouring looks like a natural variation of the brown JP1 raptors. I might change the colour of her claws to darker for a bit more contrast, and she could use more stripes.

I don't know if I'll do anything about the Battle Damage feature. It's a little distracting, but these are toys, and I don't mind if they look it. She has a case of the tilted feet like my Attack Pack Blue, but she can still stand pretty steadily, if leaning to one side a bit. I think that's also fine by me. This pack has had a tough life, and as her scarfaced other mom and grandma know particularly well, raptoring can lead to all kinds of odd injuries.

Ceiling beans

New uses for wings

The SWFL eaglets have reached 8 weeks of age, and some new milestones.

E15 has started exploring the nest tree outside the nest! So far not any further than the closest branch, referred to by viewers as the nest's veranda, but branching is an important step towards fledging. And what's more, E15 has broken the record for earliest branching among eaglets at this nest!

E16 has given the veranda a few calculating looks, too, but has stayed in the nest for now.

What E16 has gotten quite good at already, though, is mantling their food! Raptors cover their prey with their wings when eating anywhere they might get their meal stolen, and the eaglets have started learning this skill by guarding and trying to steal food from each other. Above is dad M bringing in a fish, and E16 immediately claiming it while E15 watches from behind their little sibling's wings.