U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, West Hill Dam

02/27/2026

Hello, I'm the Bald Eagle who's been sitting on eggs for 35 days 🦅

- My nest is 6 feet wide and weighs 2,000 pounds
- I've been incubating since late January
- My mate and I take 2-hour shifts
- The eggs should hatch any day now

You've been watching me on the nest camera.
I know there are thousands of you.
Watching me sit. Watching me wait. Watching me sleep.

What you don't see:
- How heavy my legs get from not moving
- The ice that forms on my feathers some mornings
- The hunger I ignore when it's not my turn to hunt
- The fear every time a crow flies too close

I've done this for 18 years.
23 eggs. 19 hatched. 16 survived to flight.
Some years, I lost them all to storms.

This year feels good.
The eggs are warm.
My mate is strong.
The fish are starting to run.

In a few days, I'll feel pecking from inside.
Then pipping. Then a wet, gray eaglet breaking through.
And I'll remember why I do this.

35 days of waiting.
For about 10 ounces of new life.
Worth it.
Always worth it.

02/27/2026

Love is in the air for coyotes during the winter months! As they are looking for mates, you may see and hear coyotes more at this time of year.

Take these three simple steps to prevent conflict with coyotes:
🔸Protect your pets by keeping them directly supervised on a leash at all times. Most coyote attacks involve dogs that are unsupervised or being supervised from a distance in a backyard.
🔸Remove human-associated food sources like bird seed, pet food, and garbage that can attract coyotes to come close to your home.
🔸Teach coyotes they are not welcome in your yard by making loud noises and chasing them away. This is called hazing and helps coyotes maintain a natural fear of humans.

Learn more at mass.gov/news/three-ways-to-prevent-conflict-during-coyote-mating-season
📷: Brendan Maher

02/26/2026

It just might be one of the coolest jobs in the district. Senior Structural engineer Bryan Paul manages the District's bridge inspection program that includes 91 bridges, the 2nd most of any USACE District. Join us as we celebrate Engineer Week!

02/26/2026

What's coming in March — A Wildlife Preview 🌱

February is ending. Here's what's about to happen:

WEEK 1-2 OF MARCH:

🦉 OWL BABIES HATCHING
Great Horned Owl eggs hatching across much of USA. Fuzzy white owlets in nests.

🐦 WOODCOCK SKY DANCE PEAK
Northern states join the party. Peak displays in most regions.

🦅 EAGLE EGGS
Many Bald Eagle nests will have eggs. Parents taking turns incubating.

🐿️ SQUIRREL BABIES EMERGING
First litters leaving nests to explore. Tiny squirrels learning to climb.

WEEK 3-4 OF MARCH:

🔴 BLACKBIRD CHORUS
Red-winged Blackbirds EVERYWHERE. Marshes deafening with "conk-la-REE!"

🐦 FIRST WARBLERS
Yellow-rumped Warblers and early migrants appearing at feeders.

🦊 FOX KITS BORN
Red fox vixens giving birth in dens. You won't see kits until May.

🐰 RABBIT BABIES
First cottontail litters born. Nest in your lawn is possible.

This isn't "someday."
This is 2-4 weeks away.

Spring doesn't arrive on March 20th.
It's been building since January.

02/25/2026

Beauty after the storm.

📸 by M. Eisnor

02/25/2026

Whether you are loving this winter wonderland or swearing off snow for the rest of eternity, take a look around our VERY snowy surroundings for animal tracks! Compare the shape, size, and track pattern to our animal tracks guide to help you make an ID.

Keep in mind that tracks can get distorted as the snow melts. Happy track ID'ing! ❄

02/24/2026

02/24/2026

02/24/2026

I am not the owl that goes hoo hoo. That's the other guy. I'm the one who sounds like someone is being murdered.

If you've ever heard "who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all" echoing through your neighborhood at 2am — that was me. A Barred Owl. Not a ghost. Not a person in trouble. Not your neighbor's strange hobby.

If you've ever heard two of us calling back and forth at the same time — the duet that sounds like maniacal laughter mixed with shrieking — you probably considered calling the police. You wouldn't be the first. Barred Owl duets generate more suspicious noise complaints than any other wildlife sound in the eastern United States.

Here's what that sound actually means.

It's February. I'm calling to establish my territory — roughly a square mile around the tree I hunt from. I need to announce two things. To other males: this area is taken, I weigh 1.6 pounds and my talons close with over 300 PSI, move along. To females: I control quality hunting ground, I caught 6 rodents last night, I have a nesting cavity ready, consider my proposal.

I call 10 to 15 times per night. Each bout lasts 2 to 4 minutes. The female responds from her position. We triangulate each other by sound — building a three-dimensional acoustic map of our shared territory without ever seeing each other in the dark.

Most people can't tell owl calls apart. Here's the quick guide for the eastern US.

The Great Horned Owl gives a deep rhythmic hoo pattern — that's the classic owl sound you learned as a child, and it's the only one that comes close to "hoo hoo." The Eastern Screech Owl makes a trembling whinny, like a tiny horse. The Barn Owl produces a sharp shriek that sounds exactly like a scream. And me — I start with "who cooks for you" and sometimes escalate into howling, cackling, and barking that sounds like nothing else on Earth.

There are 19 owl species in the United States. Not one of them actually goes hoo hoo. Every real owl call is stranger and louder than anything you've imagined.

🦉 How to hear one tonight:

- Step outside around 10pm near any wooded area in the eastern US
- Stand still for 10 to 15 minutes — your ears need time to separate the sounds
- Listen for a rhythmic call that repeats every 30 to 60 seconds from the same direction — that's a territorial owl, not a random noise
- If you hear one, try playing a recording of a Barred Owl call on your phone at low volume — there's a good chance it will answer back
- February is peak calling season — you have a better chance of hearing an owl this week than at any other time of year

That sound at 2am isn't a haunted forest. It's your neighbor introducing himself. 🌙

02/20/2026

Watch her.

She's standing in the middle of a frozen field. Snow up to her chest. Head tilted 40 degrees to the left. Every muscle locked. She hasn't moved in 22 seconds.

She's listening.

Under 2 feet of snow, a meadow vole is moving through its tunnel at 6 inches per second. The vole weighs half an ounce. It's making no audible sound to human ears. It's 3 feet away from the fox — horizontally — and 24 inches below the surface.

She can hear it.

A Red Fox's ears can detect frequencies up to 65,000 Hz — nearly twice the range of a dog and four times yours. She isn't just hearing the vole move. She's calculating its speed, its direction, and its exact depth from the variations in sound arriving at each ear — separated by just 4 inches of skull.

Now she does something that scientists didn't believe until they measured it:

She aligns her body to magnetic north.

Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen tracked 592 fox pounces over 2 years. When foxes jumped facing northeast (roughly magnetic north), their success rate was 73%. Facing any other direction: 18%. The fox is using Earth's magnetic field as a rangefinder — calculating distance to unseen prey using the angle between the sound and the magnetic north pole.

No other land predator does this.

She crouches. She loads her hind legs like springs. She launches — not forward, but UP. A 20-foot parabolic arc. At the peak, she angles her snout downward at exactly 60 degrees.

She enters the snow nose-first at 15 mph. Her entire head disappears. Her front paws pin the vole against the frozen ground through 2 feet of packed snow.

The pounce took 0.8 seconds.

She emerges with the vole in her mouth. Shakes the snow off her face. Swallows.

She's feeding 5 kits that will be born in 3 weeks. Every pounce like this is the difference between kits that survive and kits that don't.

If you see fox tracks in the snow this week — look for the headfirst dive marks. That 18-inch hole wasn't a playful fox. It was a precision-guided missile locked onto magnetic north.

02/19/2026

Male Northern Cardinals are just a little extra during a light snowfall in Rhode Island.

Photo by Norm Grant

02/18/2026

The bird you think is "wasting" your seed is planting a forest! 🌳

Dark-Eyed Juncos, with 630 million across North America, are often seen under feeders, eating dropped seeds. But did you know they're actually the continent's most prolific reforestation agents?

Here’s the seed math: A single Junco caches 3,000-5,000 seeds per month, forgetting 1,200-2,000 of them. This means that every winter, Juncos plant about 6.3 TRILLION seeds!

What they're planting:
→ Native grasses 🌾
→ Aster and goldenrod for pollinators 🐝
→ Shrub seeds that support warblers 🎶
→ Your feeder seeds turning into sunflowers by summer 🌻

So next time you see a Junco at your feeder, remember they're conducting a huge reforestation project for your yard! 🌱

Refill that feeder!