We took a quick trip to Portland (drove there day 1, spent day 2 with family, drove home day 3). Spokane to Portland is about six hours, if you're pretty efficient, which is about an hour longer than I like to spend in a car, but it was good to see family for a little bit.
One of the best things about the drive any time of year is the hawks and other birds of prey that hang out on lamp posts, signs and fences along the freeway. While the weather was perfect for the trip down (really, best I've ever seen it in December), it was icy and windy driving back to Spokane, so the birds were hunched down and fluffed out.
Imagine our surprise, when just outside of Hood River, we saw a very large moving form on the ground. It was the biggest bird Dana or I have ever seen in the wild. (The biggest anywhere was Vidor the Andean Condor, but that's another story.) It was hunched over a carcass and it looked like it was schooling a much smaller bird in the fine art of noshing on dead things.
We think it was a Golden Eagle... it was giant. Huge. Amazingly large.
Wow.
Doodled from memory from yesterday's drive.