{"id":46261,"date":"2017-02-27T06:04:34","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T13:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=46261"},"modified":"2017-02-27T09:08:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T16:08:47","slug":"golden-eagle-this-is-how-you-stick-a-landing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/27\/golden-eagle-this-is-how-you-stick-a-landing\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Eagle – This Is How You Stick A Landing!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such an impressive demonstration of power in flight from a bird. And then\u00a0this eagle pulled off a spectacular landing.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning in Box Elder County I had been photographing this juvenile Golden Eagle on top of a cliff when it suddenly flew down at a steep angle and landed in the grasses far below. It was a long distance from me and buried in the grasses so when it looked like it wasn’t going anywhere for a while I stowed my gear and began to drive down the road to look for other birds.<\/p>\n

But wouldn’t you know,\u00a0the eagle chose that moment to take off and land on the cliff again (it’s a\u00a0cross between a cliff and a small mountain, I’ll call it a cliff). In this image the cliff is out of frame to the right\u00a0and from this starting point\u00a0it’s an extremely steep angle for a bird this size (up to 10 lbs and a\u00a07 1\/2′ wingspan)\u00a0to fly directly up\u00a0to the top of the cliff.<\/p>\n

I didn’t even consider the possibility that the eagle would attempt it.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But that’s exactly what this huge bird did.<\/p>\n

By the time I got my lens on the\u00a0eagle again it was already\u00a0half way up the mountain. Partly because of the unexpectedly steep angle I had a difficult time keeping the bird in frame and in focus so most of these shots were either too soft or clipped. But I wanted to include this one to demonstrate the steepness of the climb (no, I didn’t rotate the image to make it look even steeper than it was).<\/p>\n

The goal of the eagle was to land on a small outcropping near the top of the cliff.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender,\u00a0\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here the eagle is approaching that outcropping on the right.<\/p>\n

I love this landing posture for many reasons – including those huge, outstretched feet and talons and the tail spread at an angle to show us the beautiful white markings of the juvenile. I do wish this image was just a little sharper (I had to\u00a0apply more sharpening to the bird\u00a0during processing than I like to) but I won’t complain too much…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Two frames later the eagle touched down.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And in the next photo the bird has landed (“The eagle has landed”… \ud83d\ude42 ).<\/p>\n

I like to scroll back and forth between this image and the previous one to see the dramatic demonstration of how those legs have been used as a shock absorber for the impact of landing.<\/p>\n

For me it was a jaw-dropping experience to watch the power of this huge bird as it climbed at such a steep angle to reach the outcropping. That angle would be one thing if the eagle had time to build up more speed for the climb, but it didn’t – it had\u00a0been too close to the cliff when it started for that. So the power of the ascent was simply\u00a0amazing to watch.<\/p>\n

And to climax it all with such dramatic landing\u00a0postures was just about more than I could bear, in a good way…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such an impressive demonstration of power in flight from a bird. And then this eagle pulled off a spectacular landing.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46264,"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":true,"_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":[643,689,3305,146,153,190,579,3303,3304,3306],"class_list":["post-46261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-golden-eagles","tag-aquila-chrysaetos","tag-box-elder-county","tag-cliff","tag-flight","tag-golden-eagle","tag-juvenile","tag-landing","tag-power-in-flight","tag-steep-angle","tag-white-tail-markings-of-the-juvenile"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/golden-eagle-3317-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-c29","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46261","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=46261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}