![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/golden-eagle-2178b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"A")
<\/p>\nA bird I won’t soon forget.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1\/5000, F\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This is one of the flight shots I got of the adult Golden Eagle I photographed eight days ago in a remote area of northern Utah. Many of my photos of this bird are similar but this one is unique in my collection because it caught ‘her’ wings spread as wide as possible, rather than still flapping soon after takeoff.<\/p>\n The wingspan of many Golden Eagles doesn’t exceed 6′ 7” but individuals with a wingspan of up to 7′ 8″ have been documented. In the field, my impression of this bird was that her wingspan approached the top end of that scale. She was one very impressive physical specimen, especially in my viewfinder.<\/p>\n There’s a single pokey-up grass stem at the bottom of the frame that I considered banishing from the image, but in the end I chose to leave it. It helps to “ground” the bird (give the viewer a sense of her elevation relative to the ground) and besides, I don’t like to remove stuff from my images. That choice may not be ideal aesthetically but so be it.<\/p>\n I haven’t been in the field since this photo was taken but I hope to get out again soon, even though my prospects for bird photography have potentially been complicated by recent events. More about that in a future post (don’t worry, it isn’t dire. Just highly inconvenient. And unlucky.)<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bird I won’t soon forget.<\/p>\n