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PART 1<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I needed to go walk somewhere local that I haven\u2019t been to in a few years. My inspiration came last Saturday when I took a couple of pictures from my living room of balloons at a car dealership 3 blocks away:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n They do this every weekend as if the sight of strings of balloons triggers something in people driving by to suddenly pull in and buy a car.<\/span><\/p>\n The dealership – as you can see in some of these pictures – sits on the bank of the Hackensack River on River St. On the other side is Teaneck, which I used to be able to see more of until construction of a 5-story building a block from me took away that view last year.<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately, I was able to shoot a photo stitch from the roof of that building last November 5, which illustrates my route nicely (click TWICE to fully enlarge, scroll laterally to view and hit your back button to return to this page):<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n From my building, I walked down the side street that’s on the other side of the apartment building on the far left, made a right on River St for a half-block, crossed the street and then made a left to walk up River St in the opposite direction. Right before the white building (just to the left of center) with the big lot of cars, I stopped by the cars that were just before I got to the front of that building – that’s where the balloons were, so I took some closeups:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Continuing past that building, I walked to the left (north) until I got to Anderson St – where the bridge crosses the river into Teaneck and Anderson St becomes Cedar Lane. About a hundred feet beyond the bridge was a fence with a slightly-opened gate. This was the Teaneck Greenway – technically, \u201cThe Hackensack River Greenway Through Teaneck\u201d – which runs from that opening along the river southward to where you see the big bend in the river in the above stitch, which the path then follows eastward:<\/span><\/p>\n I hadn’t been here in a few years because I always started to think about it whenever I saw the sprouting foliage. The problem is when that happens, it’s too late – you can’t see anything on the opposite (Hackensack) side of the river or take any pictures because of all the leaves. Fortunately, I thought about it this year before they sprouted.<\/span><\/p>\n The path starts out as tire tracks and devolves into a rough path. I recall that there was a garbage dump here a long<\/em> time ago, so that may be the reason for the old tire tracks. There\u2019s still a dump there, but what\u2019s dumped these days are leaves and snow and those trucks come in from another direction:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s quite the opposite of the smooth, paved path of the Hackensack River Walkway in Hackensack. There is a lot of vegetation between it and the river and it’s difficult to actually reach the river, what with all the sticker bushes, skinny tree limbs, rocks and pieces of concrete on the inclined bank. Oh, yeah – and the remains of\u2026\u2026\u2026.something<\/em> that used to be alive:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n After getting on the Greenway, I looked back toward the bridge and saw all these loitering geese:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Initially, I could see my apartment and tried to shoot through all the tree branches:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Walking a bit further, I could see the apartment, the balloons and the river. In the upper left is the new building where I shot the stitch from its roof:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Suddenly, the geese back at the bridge started honking and flying low over the river in my direction. When they reached me, there were way too many branches in the way to get a good shot.<\/span><\/p>\n They ignored my pleas for a re-do (it would have been a great shot), but they DID reverse direction and flew to my other side higher through the trees:<\/span><\/p>\n Not a great shot, but it\u2019ll have to do.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I continued down the path, I could see the old bank building at 210 Main with the new sculpture on its roof after the building was converted to condos. Two trees sort of made an X with their river reflections, so it made an OK picture:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But I noticed something else\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.a very small but familiar shape in one of the trees. I zoomed in as much as I could, but the viewfinder didn\u2019t let me identify what I had just shot:<\/span><\/p>\n A bald eagle!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I must have spent the next half-hour trying to find a clearing with a horizontal surface to steady the camera for shooting some video. The maximum zoom in video is WAY beyond the maximum zoom for stills. It\u2019s impossible to hold a small camera still when trying to focus on a super-tiny spot that\u2019s far away and under maximum magnification.<\/span><\/p>\n Plus, I was trying to do this while contorted on an inclining river bank while standing on unsteady rocks and broken round branches that made it feel like I was standing on a couple of rolling pins.<\/span><\/p>\n I got a couple of crummy vidbits that I\u2019ve stitched together while complaining about my inability to get steady footage, and I\u2019ll post that a little later.<\/span><\/p>\n Since the eagle hadn\u2019t budged in quite a while, I decided to finish my path walk, and then walk back to Hackensack and hope he\u2019d still be there.<\/span><\/p>\n The path bent around to the east to follow the river bend as I mentioned before. From one clear point, I was able to take a 7-photo stitch that lined up nicely of the entire bend section (known as Kipp\u2019s Bend) from its easternmost point (Terhune Park in Teaneck) to where it takes a right to continue heading south (mid-picture), Foschini Park in Hackensack, the bank\/condo building on Main St and back to the thick vegetation of the Greenway (same as the previous stitch: <\/span>click TWICE to fully enlarge, scroll laterally to view and hit your back button to return to this page):<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I started to head back because I still had a lot of walking to do and noticed some things I had missed before (though I don\u2019t know how I could have missed these):<\/span><\/p>\n The red ones were pointing in the direction I had just come from (was I in danger?). There WERE a lot of holes in the ground that could have housed animals (I DID look for shed snake skins when passing them). Oh well\u2026\u2026\u2026..too late now.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n How did I miss THIS? Actually, it was on my left as I was scanning the river on my right (Eagle-Eye always has a good excuse):<\/span><\/p>\n I DID check: this thing was firmly embedded in the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before I left the Greenway, I took one last shot of the Hackensack riverbank:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n ONWARD TO THE HACKENSACK EAGLE! (I hope)<\/span><\/p>\n Passing the car dealership again, I noticed that the balloons were getting tangled up in the telephone wires:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Audubon Society would prefer that nesting locations NOT be revealed so as not to cause disruption to mom and the eaglets, but I could see from Teaneck that there was no nest – it was just a high-up perch, so here\u2019s what happened.<\/span><\/p>\n As I passed by the famous White Manna burger joint (for all you out-of-towners, Guy Fieri suggests you watch this: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=g9RRsUbDV0U<\/span><\/a><\/span>), I knew I was getting close. When I got to the far end of the gas station next door, I looked up and saw:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He waited! But there were still obstructions and the camera was focusing on the branches that were between us. Besides, he was facing south and I was facing east, so I had to go around the next building to face him. By the way – there’s a McDonald’s across the street, so maybe this bird likes burger joints.<\/span><\/p>\n Late addition for the locals: this image from Google shows the McDonald’s arches on the far left, White Manna is circled in green and behind the indicated building on the right is where the tree is. Remember, it’s just a random<\/span> perch the eagle occupied at that moment. Don’t go there expecting to see the bird there again.<\/span><\/p>\n Click ONCE to enlarge and use your back button to return to this page:<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/1-IMG_7735-3-20-21-min.jpg\")
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