{"id":76613,"date":"2019-10-03T05:55:47","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T11:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=76613"},"modified":"2019-10-03T06:32:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T12:32:07","slug":"bald-eagle-landing-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/bald-eagle-landing-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Bald Eagle Landing Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why does the trailing edge of the wings of some sub-adult Bald Eagles in flight have an irregular appearance rather than the “straight-cut” look of most other eagles?<\/p>\n

This is an older series I’ve never posted before, largely because the background in many of the photos is very close to the eagle and some viewers will probably find it distracting. But I like the flight postures and I think the sub-adult eagle has some interesting white mottling so I decided to go against my better? instincts and post it anyway.<\/p>\n

Besides, I see a “teachable moment” in the series and you know how I am about that kind of thing…<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It was a typical very cold but sunny winter day at Farmington when I caught the immature eagle coming in to land near the shore of one of the ponds. This shot has the least distracting background of the series because the bird is above most of the closest phragmites. I actually like the layered background of pale blue sky, out of focus phrags in the middle background and sharper phrag plumes below.<\/p>\n

Sharp eyes will likely notice that three of the secondary flight feathers on the left wing are significantly longer than the others. Juvenile secondaries are longer that those of sub-adults and adults so those three feathers are faded juvenile feathers that have yet to be molted. The resulting irregular appearance of the trailing edge of the wings is a useful field mark for estimating relative age of sub-adult Bald Eagles in flight.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The right wing has also retained some of those longer juvenile secondaries but they’re less obvious in this photo.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

By now the eagle is very close to the closest phrags.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And now the bird is low enough that we actually see some of the snow on the ground. This is the last photo I’m including in the series because I didn’t like the actual landing shots very well.<\/p>\n

Ok, I’ll admit another reason I posted this series. It was taken over ten years ago and until last night I hadn’t seen it for years. I’m more than a little surprised that back then I was able to keep focus locked on the eagle with the background so close to the bird. In 2009 I was far from a skilled bird photographer and typically in a situation like this the close background would grab my active focus points and the bird would be soft.<\/p>\n

It must have been my lucky day.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This photo of a juvenile (1st year) Bald Eagle was taken at Farmington on the same day.<\/p>\n

I’m including it for two reasons – to give my readers a visual break from the busier background of the earlier series (backgrounds don’t come much cleaner than plain blue sky) and to illustrate the “straight cut” trailing edge of the wing of the juvenile as compared to the more irregular appearance of the sub-adult in the earlier series.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: I don’t claim to be an expert on the age progression of Bald Eagles. I’m only reporting here what I’ve learned from folks much smarter than myself and it’s always possible that I’ve misinterpreted some of the information or used some technically incorrect terminology (the preferred application of “juvenile” and “sub-adult” for example). It can be confusing so if I’ve made any errors please let me know and I’ll correct them. <\/em><\/p>\n

I sure as hell don’t want to join the long list of perveyors of “False News”… \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Why does the trailing edge of the wings of some sub-adult Bald Eagles in flight have an irregular appearance rather than the “straight-cut” look of most other eagles?<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76620,"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":[355,334,2782],"tags":[43,1008,146,400,768,190,579,4762,1178],"class_list":["post-76613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-bald-eagle","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-haliaeetus-leucocephalus","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-landing","tag-length-of-secondary-feathers","tag-sub-adult"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bald-eagle-9546b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-jVH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76613","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=76613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}