Thursday, August 12, 2010

Raptors: Part II


Bald Eagles were one of the first birds I photographed. This was before digital and before I had a plan of what I was going to do with my photography. My first "professional" camera was a Minolta APS back in 1996. What a great idea, a film cartridge that holds the negatives after they have been developed. I needed to get in on this new technology. But, before long I had over 1,000 cartridges and not a very good system for organizing them. You could get "boxes" that looked much like a VHS Tape Box, with the ability to store (I can't remember) maybe 20 cartridges. By 1998, I had graduated to the Canon EOS 1V 35mm camera, and by 2006 finally, the Canon 5D digital. Thank goodness for digital, photoshop, and organizing software like iPhoto. But, unfortunately, many of my APS photos ended up in the world's "lost and found"along with every pen I've ever bought.  So, I have to live with many fond memories of photos no longer in hand. I remember eight Bald Eagles standing in a flooded field alongside a back road to Roche Lake in British Columbia. I was able to get within 25 yards of them. But the photos are gone. There was also a time along the Skagit River in Northwest Washington where I got several photos of 30 to 40 Bald Eagles in the same tree. Even so, I have a few more to show you:
This is a juvenile Bald Eagle in his second year (the white molting is the key to its age)


Here, of course, is the adult

Bald Eagles are often found in pairs, especially in the winter, as the last three photos show:







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