Poem for Friday and Neighborhood Eagles

The Eagle 

By Anna Letitia Barbauld 

The tawny Eagle seats his callow brood

High on the cliff, and feasts his young with blood:

On Snowdon rocks, or Orkney’s wide domain,

Whose beetling cliffs o’er hang the Western main,

The royal bird his lonely kingdom forms,

Amidst the gathering clouds and sullen storms;

Through the wide waste of air he darts his sight,

And holds his sounding pinions poised for flight;

With cruel eye premeditates the war,

And marks his destined victim from afar:

Descending in a whirlwind to the ground,

His pinions like the rush of waters sound:

The fairest of the fold he bears away,

And to his nest compels the struggling prey;

He scorns the game by meaner hunters tore,

And dips his talons in no vulgar gore.

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We had rain forecast on Friday, but it didn't arrive until quite late in the day. Still, I didn't get out in the morning -- I did get to talk to Alice in Florida, and to message with younger son, who is visiting a friend in Maine -- and one of the neighborhood eagles decided to sit in the tree right above our hummingbird feeders, so although we didn't see any hummingbirds all day, we did see their much larger cousins. We walked to the park in the afternoon, saw the waterfowl there, then came home for spaghetti. 

After dinner, we watched Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, mostly because I wanted to see Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, and Pom Klementieff, and I ignore Tom Cruise action sequences. It was okay, barely passed the Bechdel Test, had lovely scenery, was longer than necessary but they wanted two movies. We also watched the end of the fourth season of White Collar so we could find out just how bad Neal's dad really is. Speaking of the local eagles, here they are around Marymoor and Idylwood: