Masu summer (Masummer?) snapshots

E16 has fledged!

The SWFL eagle nest now has two fledglings!

E16 (front/left) and E15 hanging out at the attic just before the cameras had a malfunction. During the time the cameras were down, the eaglets left the nest and made their way to the pasture pond.

E16 (left again, I'm pretty sure, but hard to tell) and E15 splashing around at the same spot E15 visited when she* first fledged! They seemed to really enjoy the water, and spent some time having a drink and a bath.

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)