Resolving power

A phrase caught my attention while reading Soaring with the Wind to my daughters. “Resolving power is the ability to focus on things far away. A bald eagle has eight times more resolving power than a person.”

It’s a phrase that will be recurring in my mind now. Sometimes it’s an effort to be present in the moment, to focus on what’s close at hand. But sometimes, it’s the long view that gets you through. I need more “resolving power.”

Speaking of eagles: I mentioned in a recent post how my father-in-law is able to observe an eagle family from his back yard. They have a baby (egret? fledgling) which, a few weeks ago, was visited by a brave conservation officer who climbed up to the nest and fastened a metal band around its foot. He took this picture while peering into the nest, and gave it to my father in law:

Is that amazing, or is that amazing?

The bird is about a month old in this photo. It’s not colored like a mature adult, but the face is all eagle. The tail of some unfortunate carp lies in front of the bird, who must eat lots of them to grow at the rate of a foot a week.

Incidentally, I also got a good photo of my own today of this bird’s extreme opposite:

It has nothing to do with eagles or resolving power, but I was struck by the contrast between these two species. So much variety in nature!