January 20 2008 Eagle Watching at Accotink Bay

Accotink Bay is an outstanding location to view adult and immature bald eagles in the winter. Accontink Bay is best accessed from the Archery Range on Ft Belvoir.

We arrived at the Archery Range in the early afternoon and were immediately welcomed by an immature bald eagle flying right above us. We observed a total of approximately 15 adult and immature bald eagles--most in Accotink Bay, and 4 - 5 across the way at Pohick Bay (small boat put-in at Pohick Bay Regional Park).

The eagles were particularly active--the morning temperature was in the teens.
We shot most of our pictures through the front window of the Honda Element--whose curvature presented some problems in focusing. I used my Canon Rebel XTi with a 2x TC and a 300mm IS lense. Use of the 2x TC made my camera operate in a strict manual mode--even the AF points would not light. It is hard to manually focus and track a moving overhead eagle. Thus, not all of the pictures below are crisp--but I wanted to show some of the content anyway.


Eagle on a water object. A second eagle leaving the water.

Five eagles in a tree across the way from the Archery Range.

Eagle snatching a fish out of the water

Common merganser

Eagle soaring above

Three eagles soaring above

Unknown Duck--note ring at base of bill

Another unidentified duck
Soaring immature bald eagle

Glorious immature bald eagle straight overhead

Same immature bald eagle soaring above


Sea gull in the nearby mud flats

Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge 1 Sept 2007

Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge is the downstream component of the Accotink Creek. The refuge is on the grounds of Ft Belvoir, Va., accessible from the Tully Gate on US Rt#1.

This refuge is best known for viewing bald eagles from the lower Wildlife Refuge point of the Archery Range during the dead of winter. In January of this year, we observed three full sized bald eagles and three immature bald eagles flying between tree tops and holes in the ice.

I walked about 8 miles of trails. I viewed great white egrets flying around [pictures below] and many types of butterflies [also below]. I was unable to capture pictures of the dragon and damselflies, however.

Trails on the west side of the creek tended to be less maintained and marked. I found the southern part of the Accotink Creek Trail to be impassible--totally overgrown with brambles and wild grape leaves. The Great Blue Heron Trail, though covered in waist high grasses and shoulder high brambles, brought many good pictures and a raised blind.

The McCarty Loop Trail and the Cemetery Loop trails just dissipated; I ended up instead in the W-1, W-6, and W-7 hunting range areas of the base.

The Bay and the Upper Creek would be quite interesting to view from a canoe or a kayak.









This is a butterfly I have not seen before.





Geese flying overhead.


This swallowtail butterfly just landed at my feet.


This was one of at least a dozen spider webs I encountered on the trail.