Look what I saw yesterday!!

Sorry to be so excited but it was the first time I've shot a Bald Eagle in the wild! I went to a new place to check it out on Sunday. I just had gotten out of the car and walked over to the boat ramp and saw this almost directly overhead:


I only got about 6-7 shots of him. Then he took off and never returned. There was another bald eagle off to the right but too far away. He dive bombed into the lake, then took off. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't return and there wasn't really much of anything else there to shoot. But I kept thinking to myself "Yeah, but I got a Bald Eagle!" It's very exciting.



I know the head is a little blown but I don't care!  

 

Thanks everyone! I felt very fortunate to not only get the shots but even just to see this magnificent bird. I neglected to mention that these were with the 300 and 1.4x. 1st was a slight crop off right and the 2nd uncropped. Gives you an idea of how close he really was with the view through the HSC markings in the viewfinder. Was set for manual and didn't have a chance to manipulate the settings and went with what I had used while shooting on the way into the park.

This was at Lake Kissimmee which is the 3rd largest lake in Florida. Just south of here is a Wildlife Management Area that boasts the largest concentration of nesting bald eagles in the lower 48. Not sure about that...drove around for hours and barely saw any birds. Put over 200+ miles on yesterday.

But, like I said, all that was worth it just to have a couple of eagle keeper shots, blown heads or not!  

Thanks for looking.

 

Thanks Don and Thos! Appreciate you looking.  

 

Thanks Scott, Ben & Frank! They are very majestic birds. And it is really exciting seeing them in the wild. I can only imagine what it would be like in Alaska seeing them flying all over the place!

 

Thanks Jim for the kind words!