Walked a few miles at Buzzard Swamp today, a preserve about 30 miles from here, which I visit 6 or 7 times a year. I enjoy the open land there and it is a good spot to see wildlife and fish for large mouth bass. Today I saw bald eagles nesting ( that spruce tree in the closeup is the same one that is in the panoramic picture, so I had to zoom in without a tripod...) The beaver pond borders the dirt access road and fortunately did not flood the road. The Allegheny forest that surrounds this open land and is mostly mountainous, which makes the flat, watery refuge all the more rare and valuable. Beavers and bald eagles are relatively common in western PA, although neither one is a daily sighting unless one knows where to look. Eagles frequent the rivers that flow right though town, but beavers dam the smaller creeks in the valleys further away. Trappers keep the latter population down but not so much that I do not see the animals regularly.As in much of the country, winter came fast around here with cold and snow jumping a month ahead of normal...perhaps that is
