This afternoon, Beau returned home after being gone 15 days and lands on the wallenda branch. He vocalizes when he lands and looks around his territory. Beau has returned a bit scuffled up with missing feathers on his head and dried blood on his tail. His feet from what I could see look to be okay. Welcome home Beau - you have been missed!

The cam op zooms on Beau and we can see the left eye flecks which is a key to identify him. We also see his head and the missing feathers is now a part when the wind blows. Zooming on his tail, you can see the dried blood high under his brown secondary feathers. Beau appears to have been in a fight and thankfully he is not injured.

24E1 has not been to the nest at all today so far. He was last seen yesterday Oct 1st at the nest. Gabby was in the nest tree this morning but flew off. I hope that 24E1 is not injured in anyway if he & Beau had a skirmish. We certainly don't want any re-injury to those toes!

Beau stayed for three hours before flying off the LOP.

It was really wonderful to see Beau back and to see that he is okay. Some viewers expressed concern over Beau's last visit on the nest Sept 17th where he laid down for a few hours on the nest and then flew off and was not seen until today. Clearly he was close by and biding his time until he could return. There is no way to know if the dried blood happened two weeks ago or just recently as blood dries very quickly. We can't see what transpires off the nest and out of cam view so we don't know for certain if Beau & 24E1 fought one another. Hopefully 24E1 is okay out there and not injured.

There is much that remains to be seen and this saga is likely not over yet. As I mentioned back on Sept 18th, I did believe we would see Beau back again as he has a pattern of leaving for periods of time early in the season and returning with some cuts to his talons indicating he was out protecting his territory. This appears to be the case once again. It is still early in the season and there is a lot of unknowns now with 24E1 in the picture. Remember it will be Gabby's decision on who she wants as a mate. Last season we saw that constant fighting for territory late in the nesting season can mess with hormone production which most likely impacted Beau's ability to incubate the eggs at that point.

So now we watch and observe the eagles once again do what eagles do! I just want Gabby to be happy and have a stress free season no matter who she chooses ♥ Thank you for watching!

Video captured & edited by Lady Hawk

Courtesy of AEF NEFL American Eagle Foundation Eagles. org