The Eagles Have Landed ...

               “The Eagle has landed.”

                   ~ Neil Armstrong

                        ~ 1930-2012

At 4:18 p.m. on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong’s voice crackled from the speakers at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, Texas. He said simply, “The Eagle has landed.” With those words, the dream President John F. Kennedy voiced in 1961 – putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade – had at last come true. Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11, was the first man to walk on the moon.

It was wonderful to photograph a majestic American Bald Eagle and Juvenile Bald Eagle after they landed on a high perch above the Little Lehigh Creek on an early October evening at Lehigh Parkway, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States.

The bald eagle appears on our nation’s seal. In the late 20^th century it was on the brink of extirpation in the contiguous United States. Populations have since recovered and the species was removed from the U.S. government’s list of endangered species on July 12, 1995 and transferred to the list of threatened species. It was removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in the lower 48 states on June 28, 2007.

Background texture by Jai Johnson added for artistic effect.