{"id":27845,"date":"2014-11-11T06:12:04","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T13:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=27845"},"modified":"2014-11-12T13:31:23","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T20:31:23","slug":"golden-eagle-out-damnd-wires-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/11\/golden-eagle-out-damnd-wires-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Eagle – Out, Damn’d Wires, Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a small list of personal nemesis species but if forced to choose the top contender it would have to be the shy and\u00a0elusive Golden Eagle.\u00a0 I’d estimate that I get a reasonable chance with one of these birds about two times per year and every<\/em> time something goes wrong that prevents me from getting the photos I covet so much.\u00a0 Two mornings ago (in western Utah county)\u00a0it was those ever-pesky power lines.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> 100-400 @ 350mm,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This beautiful bird was the tamest Golden Eagle I’ve ever encountered.\u00a0 I spent some time with it twice that morning (at least I believe it was the same bird) and each time it was on a power pole next to a road.\u00a0 I got lots of shots of it on the pole but I was after flight shots so I had to hope for the best during take-off, which didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

This is the first pole I found the eagle on.\u00a0 I watched it go after prey\u00a0three times and the third time I believe it was successful with a rabbit (both rabbit and bird disappeared on the\u00a0 ground behind a juniper tree) so it didn’t return to the perch.\u00a0\u00a0This shot isn’t particularly sharp, I think the wires may have interfered with my autofocus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> 100-400 @ 400mm,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But on one of its earlier forays it did return to the pole and once again those blasted wires (and circumstances in general) messed up my shots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark ll, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4\u00a0 tc, taken and processed in JPEG, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forty five minutes later I encountered what I believe to be the same\u00a0eagle several miles away on another power pole.\u00a0 This time it was side-lit and a little less cooperative though still very tame.\u00a0 I had to pass this bird in my pickup directly under the\u00a0eagle and it didn’t even flinch.<\/p>\n

I hope you’ll forgive yet another post about opportunity and failure rather than excellent images but one of my goals with this blog was to document some of the trials and tribulations (along with the occasional triumphs) of bird photography.\u00a0\u00a0My nemesis curse continues but damn I enjoyed watching this bird up close as it preened, stretched and just sat there looking regal!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – one of the things I particularly enjoy about Golden Eagles is their “golden mane”, most easily seen in the first image.\u00a0 My apologies to Lady Macbeth for the near-quote in my title but it just kept coming to mind while I was composing this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a small list of personal nemesis species but if forced to choose the top contender it would have to be the shy and elusive Golden Eagle. I’d estimate that I get a reasonable chance with one of these birds about two times per year and every time something goes wrong that prevents me from getting the photos I covet so much. Two mornings ago it was those ever-pesky power lines.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,642],"tags":[643,153,178,2307,596,459,311,533],"class_list":["post-27845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-golden-eagles","tag-aquila-chrysaetos","tag-golden-eagle","tag-hunting","tag-lady-macbeth","tag-nemesis","tag-rabbit","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/golden-eagle-1168-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7f7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}