Bald Eagle catching breakfast 5/9/24
I’ve been getting simultaneously very lucky and a little unlucky with my eagle shots. This morning I went down to the lake to try and get some Baltimore Oriole shots with the light in a better position than I had the previous evening. As I was wrapping up my oriole shots, I looked out over the lake to see if the Bald Eagles had shown up. When they appear, they tend to be on the other side of the lake, so after the orioles, I was going to drive over and try to get some eagle shots. As I was turning around I saw a Bald Eagle coming right at me, clearly targeting something in the lake. My camera was not set up for that, but I didn’t have the time to make any changes so I just pointed, started shooting and hoped something would come out. Almost all of the shots were a little blurry because I had been set at 1/800 sec for the oriole, which is too slow for bird-in-flight, especially when they’re close and coming on a hunting run. A few of the shots did come out, though in a couple shots the wings were slightly clipped. I was really frustrated looking through the shots, because there were some pretty awesome poses in there but too blurry to even try and recover. At the same time, it’s hard to complain about the shots I did manage to get - I’m pretty happy with them.
The photos are in time order. Photo1 he clearly has his prey in sight. Photo2 he does a hard banking maneuver (no, that’s not a rotated photo, that was his position in the sky). Photo3 was just after he snagged the fish. Photo4 he’s flying away with the fish tucked up under his tail.
