Mora Bay, Olympic National Park, Washington

Driftwood on Rialto Beach at Moro Bay

Driftwood on beach with sea stacks in the background

An American Bald Eagle with lunch for the babies

The eagle killed a seagull to feed the chicks

The beach was mostly stone

We stayed one night in Forks, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. For those of you with teenage children, you may recognize Forks from the movie "Twilight" based on the books on teenage vampires. The town has gotten a lot of tourism because of the movie. The motel we stayed in even has "Twilight" rooms, complete with hot pink walls and movie posters. We chose a regular room.

The owners of the motel suggested we visit Mora Bay to see the sea stacks and the "hole in the wall" sea cave. When we got the the beach, we were the only folks there. We were surprised to see the huge driftwood logs and the stones that looked like they belonged in a river and not on the beach. It was a beautiful bay.

While walking along the beach, we saw the most amazing thing either of us have ever seen. We saw an eagle flying across the ocean and land in a tree. We have seen eagles before in Alaska and in Florida, however, they were typically sitting in a tree. The amazing thing is what happened next. The eagle took off from the tree and flew out to sea very fast but very quietly. We saw the eagle going after another bird. The eagle was relentless. It kept driving the other bird into the water. Finally, the eagle grabbed its prey and started flying back toward the beach. It landed on a low branch on a dead tree and threw the bird too the ground. It then went down and picked up the bird and flew to the nest. Although we could not see the nest nor the chicks, we heard a lot of racket from the chicks.

We spent so much time watching this amazing display of nature that we never made it out to the sea cave. We will probably get to see other sea caves but I doubt we will ever get another chance to witness such a remarkable event as an eagle hunting.