Surprising Bald Eagle Behavior

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US, and the weather here in Northern Virginia is gorgeous: cold, sunny, just as I like it for visits to Occoquan Bay NWR. I arrived just as the gate opened.

Since getting my new 500mm lens, I've tried photographing some birds that I've previously ignored.

This is the time of year when the resident eagle couples reclaim their nests and repair them for the coming nesting season. There are two nests at OBNWR and both of them had eagles nearby when I visited this morning. The nest near the shore had an eagle in the tree, eating something bloody. But the other tree was the location for a much more interesting encounter.

This second nest is away from the shore, right next to a road.

Bald Eagle Nest

Unlike the other nest, it's possible to walk right up to and under this tree and the nest in it. From several hundred yards away, I looked at it through my camera and it appeared that maybe I could just make out a white head in the nest. I walked toward the nest and the eagles did what they always do when I approach: they flew away. I lost sight of them. Oh well, I walked right up to the tree. And I was stunned when one of them came back. I only just managed to get my camera up and in focus to track it as it flew, with a stick, into the nest right in front of me.

Bald Eagle With Stick for Nest

And it promptly flew away again. I spotted its mate in a tree in the distance, and I decided to hang around, hoping for another stick delivery. No joy. I decided to try to approach the one that I had spotted earlier. It flew away. Then I looked back at the nest to discover that the one I gave up on while waiting for stick delivery had sneaked into the nest while I was stalking its mate, and it flew away again. Both of them landed in a tree away from the road (where it's against the rules to get off the road). And another photographer came along, so the game was over. These birds were so close that I heard their wings flapping.

One More Trip to Conowingo

Once again I had Friday off from work and the weather was good and I went to the dam. Parking this time of year is scarce there, so I left home really early and arrived at 6:20 and got one of the few remaining parking spots. More importantly the spot I wanted by the fence to shoot from was already crowded. I had to settle for the concrete balcony.

I wore 3 layers of shirts and my army Goretex field jacket and was still cold. The temperature was only about 35F but the wind and proximity to water made it uncomfortable.

I've never seen so many eagles before. They weren't in the trees by the parking lot or on the electrical towers, but they were everywhere on the far shore. At times there were swarms of eagles flying around. All day long there were eagle fishing events and attempted fish thefts. And they were all way too far away for good shots. But I got some keepers in spite of the distance, and here are a few of them.

Sadly I did a poor job with the fish fights. Most of them happened quite far away with busy backgrounds. Keeping them in focus and well-exposed at that distance was a job that I had trouble with.

Neither Bird Gets the Fish

Seagull Chases Eagle

 The seagull-eagle chase was a first for me. The eagle snatched the fish moments before this shot and as the eagle climbed to go find a place to eat, this gull chased it around in a few circles.

Fish Fight

Fish Fight

There were frequent eagle frenzies on the opposite shore. I think most of them happened when an eagle dropped a fish on the rocks, resulting in dozens of other eagles converging.

And this one wins the prize for the biggest fish that I saw all day.

Quite a Big Fish

This Year's Crowd Shot

In summary, I clearly need to work on my technique. I came away with way too many out-of-focus and over-exposed shots. I've been shooting in manual exposure mode since I got the new lens over the summer. I'm convinced it's the right way to go and I'm committed to sticking with it, but I get a little forgetful about checking exposure frequently as the light changes. The lens has trouble tracking focus with a busy background; I have to get better at recognizing when I can get away with acquiring focus and then LET GO of the button because the action is far away and the birds aren't necessarily leaving the plane of focus. I'm also still getting used to shooting from a tripod, and that's a challenge when the action is close and moving fast.

Delmarva Trip

There was a scheduled launch from Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island to take place on November 11 at about 7:30AM. I had the 10th off from work, thus making this a long weekend. I decided to make it a road trip. My wife booked a room for us and I took a leisurely drive, stopping at Blackwater NWR on the way. Almost everything interesting at Blackwater was too far away to bother photographing. Even the huge swans were just white dots in the distance. I didn't linger because I needed to get to Chincoteague.

Ruddy Duck at Blackwater NWR

Well, the launch was a bust. With only a minute to go, an aircraft strayed into the no fly zone. I read later that the aircraft was at 500 feet and 6 miles off shore. What? Is that a drug smuggler? When I was learning to fly my instructor drilled it into me, altitude gives you options; stay close to shore so you can glide to land if the engine fails. This pilot was clearly on a different script.

I was all set up on the causeway between Chincoteague and Assateague islands, camera on manual exposure mode, exposure set to be somewhat dark to compensate for the expected bright fire of the rocket, and enduring the cold wind. They aborted the launch, and launched the next day after I returned home. Oh well, I took this trip knowing that these things happen.

Before the Launch that Didn't Happen

Later I drove to Assateague island and looked for birds. It was so uncomfortably cold and windy that I just wasn't having any fun and left after photographing a great egret and some gulls.

Gull on Assateague Island

Gulls

Gull

Ah, You're Interrupting my Nap

Great Egret

Conowingo Dam, Round 2

Once again I've been seeing good trip reports from the dam, and I had the day off from work, so I went. This time there was very light traffic and I arrived in morning twilight with a handful of photographers already there and the turbines running and a thick bank of fog blanketing the whole area. The water was high so I couldn't set up on my preferred spot on the rocks; it was under water. The terrace was closed; even the fishermen were blocked out.

I set up along the fence in an area that had no trees to obstruct the view and waited. Sometimes the fog was so thick that it obscured the dam entirely.

Of course I always check other photographers' gear out. I'm shooting with a full frame Nikon, 500mm lens, on a Gitzo tripod, with a Wimberley gimbal head. For the first time in the years I've been going there, I feel like my gear is average. The guy next to me was shooting an 800mm lens. Most everyone else seemed to have something in the range of 500mm lenses, plus or minus 100mm. Most tripods were Gitzo or RRS, and most heads were gimbals, although I saw a weird setup with a gimbal head mounted to a ball head. Some photographers were shooting with ball heads or pan/tilt heads. I keep expecting to see mirrorless cameras among the photographers, but there weren't any this trip.

We waited in the fog. And waited. Finally at about 10AM the sun started breaking through. Quite a few eagles were present on the far shore, dozens by my count. And lots of cormorants and pigeons and gulls. A few herons were also there. Most of the action this day took place either too far away or in mist so thick that the camera had trouble acquiring focus.

I got few keepers this trip because of the distance and mist, and here they are.

Cormorant in the Mist with a Huge Fish

 Eventually the cormorant gave up and let the fish go; it was too big to eat.

Distant Action

 There were lots of distant eagle-in-flight interactions.

Great Blue Heron Skims the Water

Nearly Mature Looking for Fish

Rare Close Flyby

Which One of these Doesn't Belong?

Flyby

Flyby

Who Knew There is at Least One Deer on the Island?

I never saw this deer. I was trying to follow a bird in flight and missed the bird but inadvertently got a shot of this deer on the island. I guess it or its mother swam over?

Flyby

Flyby

Flyby

Flyby

Flyby

So I'll wait for it to get colder to force more eagles to migrate south through the area, and hope for good weather on a day that I can take off from work, and I'll make the trip again if I can.