{"id":28638,"date":"2014-12-29T06:23:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T13:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28638"},"modified":"2014-12-29T06:23:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T13:23:14","slug":"two-golden-eagles-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/29\/two-golden-eagles-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Golden Eagles On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t seen a Golden Eagle on Antelope Island for many months but yesterday there were two of them and they seemed like good buddies.<\/p>\n

The shooting conditions couldn’t have been much worse.\u00a0 It was\u00a0quite dark, heavily overcast and snowing intermittently so these images have been shot at high ISO’s and many of them have high key backgrounds.\u00a0 My goal with this post is simply to document the encounter.\u00a0 After all, they were Golden Eagles<\/em>!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It was a\u00a0huge\u00a0surprise when I first encountered the birds directly in front of me.\u00a0 They were relatively\u00a0accepting of my vehicle for\u00a0Golden Eagles but I didn’t like this bright background so I tried to…\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

maneuver into a position with a different backdrop and better light\u00a0but when I did I could only see part of the birds through the rocks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When they flew off I eventually\u00a0encountered one of them again on a far away hilltop.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent quite a while with this bird as the shooting conditions deteriorated (as you can see there’s now snow falling between me and the eagle).\u00a0 Soon a magpie\u00a0flew in and impudently perched on the tree at upper left.\u00a0 At this point I didn’t know where the second eagle was but…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0it apparently took exception to the magpie and flew in to displace it from its\u00a0perch.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/8, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The second eagle was unstable on its perch and several times it struggled to maintain its balance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/8, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Some time later it took off…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

and I was able to get quite a few shots of it as it …<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/8, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>flew down the hill.\u00a0 The other eagle soon followed and I wasn’t sure where they went.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/8, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But eventually I was surprised to find them again on their original rock perch.\u00a0 I couldn’t see them until I came around some other obscuring boulders (out of focus at lower left) so I was still moving when I took this shot and as a result the bird isn’t as sharp as it could be.\u00a0 I missed focus completely as the bird actually took off when my pickup rocked backward when I stopped.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"golden<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

These birds stayed in the same general area for much of the morning but they were always near sagebrush, probably because they were hunting rabbits that were using it for cover.\u00a0 Most of the time they were far away and I only had distant views of them like this one.<\/p>\n

Dang, I’m glad to see Golden Eagles on the island again!\u00a0 I hope they hang around all winter.\u00a0 And thrive!\u00a0 From following reports from Hawkwatch International I know that Golden Eagles in\u00a0our region\u00a0have really been struggling in recent years due to issues apparently related to invasive cheatgrass and lack of prey.<\/p>\n

And who knows, maybe one day I’ll get some better shots of them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t seen a Golden Eagle on Antelope Island for many months but yesterday there were two of them and they seemed like good buddies.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28665,"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":[3,334,642],"tags":[31,643,57,1702,153,1432,632,187,2359,311],"class_list":["post-28638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-golden-eagles","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-aquila-chrysaetos","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-cheatgrass","tag-golden-eagle","tag-hawkwatch-international","tag-high-key","tag-iso","tag-saggebrush","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/golden-eagle-8967b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7rU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28638","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=28638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}