![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/couch-hunters-rest-0709-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"couch-hunters-rest-0709-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nDuring hunting season you just never know what strange sights you might see at Farmington Bay.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hunters are generally a hardy lot but apparently some of them\u00a0like their comforts. About a week ago on a cold morning just after sunrise\u00a0while I was driving south\u00a0toward the 4-way at Farmington Bay WMA I encountered a sight that made me do a double-take. It was three hunters dressed to\u00a0the gills for the\u00a0cold and wet conditions of the marsh\u00a0lounging on a\u00a0plush and\u00a0comfy-looking triple recliner on the ground that was facing the large expanse of\u00a0water on Unit 1 just a few feet in front of them.<\/p>\n
They looked silly as hell but they didn’t care. They’d\u00a0hauled it there\u00a0in a pickup that was directly behind me when I took this photo a little later that morning. They were obviously warming up as they faced the sun rising over the nearby mountains and they were having a grand old time with their incongruous display for all to see. They weren’t hunting from there\u00a0so they weren’t doing anything\u00a0wrong (it’s illegal to hunt from that close to the road)\u00a0and I actually got a kick out of seeing such an\u00a0unexpected sight.<\/p>\n
I wanted to snap their photo while they were sitting there but I figured that would be intrusive and rude of me and I didn’t have time to stop and ask for permission\u00a0so I didn’t. I took this shot a short while later as I passed by once again and they were presumably hunting again\u00a0out on the water. I was largely bird-skunked on that trip to the refuge so in some ways seeing those guys\u00a0was the highlight of my morning. They apparently took the recliner with them when they left the area because I haven’t seen it since.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Farmington Bay is a magnet for both duck hunters and bird photographers and this particular\u00a0area of the refuge, very close to what most folks call the “second bridge” or “the owl bridge”, seems to be a hotspot for both. When I looked at this photo it reminded me of some of my own photographic ventures near the owl bridge, especially because of the two man-made vertical\u00a0structures we see in the background – the stout but short wooden pole to the left in the frame and the weather station tower we see just to the left of the maroon pickup. The actual bridge, a small one, is beneath and directly in front of\u00a0the tower.<\/p>\n
So I thought I’d show you a couple of examples of\u00a0raptors I’ve photographed on those perches in the past. Some\u00a0viewers will have already seen\u00a0one or more of\u00a0the following photos but I think the recliner\u00a0shot helps to put that area of Farmington in perspective, especially for those who have never been there and that includes the vast majority of my readers from all over the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"bald-eagle-1355\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/bald-eagle-1355.jpg\" "\\"bald-eagle-1355")
<\/p>\n
Various raptors, especially American Kestrels and Bald Eagles, love to perch on that stout pole in the previous photo\u00a0and I spent several hours literally\u00a0freezing my keester off waiting for interesting poses from this nearly adult Bald Eagle on that frozen morning in the coldest part of winter. I might have been colder for longer on\u00a0that morning than I’ve ever been while photographing birds over the past ten years and\u00a0I’ll never forget the experience.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons I waited and suffered for so long with this eagle\u00a0was because once in a great while it would\u00a0take off\u00a0directly away from me to a large expanse of water in front of me and try to catch fish and then it would return to this same perch to eat it. I was hoping to catch it flying toward me with a fish in its talons.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bald-eagle-8330-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"bald-eagle-8330-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But\u00a0the eagle\u00a0only returned to the pole with a fish one time and I botched those flight shots (my personal contribution to the Farmington Follies). But it returned several times with empty talons so I still got a fair number of flight shots I like as the eagle was flying directly toward me and the pole. Eye contact just doesn’t get more intense and direct than this. It almost looks like the intention of the eagle is to land on my head. Or to rip it off.<\/p>\n
I wish that coot (the black blob)\u00a0hadn’t been on the water at the tip of the right wing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n