Dusky spectres spawned by winged dreams

I'm not sure what I saw while driving home from work tonight, but I know what I wanted to see: an eagle. Or, better yet, a pair of eagles. That's what a member of our local birding group reported seeing yesterday on the west side of the Muskingum River about a mile south of Lowell--exactly where we kept seeing a pair of eagles two years ago, perched in a tall tree inside a wide curve in the river, where the iconic birds could scan a great distance upstream and down.

That's what I was looking for and that's what I may have seen while driving home from work tonight, but maybe not. The light was poor and the traffic was moving at a brisk pace up the highway so I could devote only a small fraction of my attention to the trees along the river. The first time past I saw something big and dark enough to be an eagle stretching out what may have been wings, but a truck interrupted the view and then I would have had to turn around in my seat to see it, which is not the way to arrive alive.

So instead I turned the car around and made another pass, which revealed not one but two eagle-sized patches of black right where we kept seeing eagles two years ago. Were they eagles or blobs of leaves or dusky spectres spawned by my winged dreams? How can I trust what I see when my eyes are so easily fooled by a touch of twilight and an urgent need to shape a dark blob into the form of an eagle?

And what will I see tomorrow morning when I drive past that spot in the daylight? I'm almost afraid to look.