{"id":81044,"date":"2020-01-26T06:08:32","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T13:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=81044"},"modified":"2020-01-26T11:30:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T18:30:03","slug":"bald-eagle-serendipity-yesterday-morning-in-my-own-yard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/26\/bald-eagle-serendipity-yesterday-morning-in-my-own-yard\/","title":{"rendered":"Bald Eagle Serendipity Yesterday Morning In My Own Yard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Methinks I sometimes bitch too much when unexpected inclement weather forces me to stay home instead of going shooting as I planned. Blog followers were forced to endure some of that bellyaching in yesterday’s post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yesterday it was dense and completely unexpected morning fog that kept me home when I was itching to get out into the field. Of course it cleared up later in the morning but by then it was too damned late. So I stayed home in a lousy mood despite the sunshine, maybe because<\/em> of the sunshine that came to late to save the day.<\/p>\n

But at about midday my neighbor Shane, who knows my addiction to birds, came to my door and told me there was a Bald Eagle in one of our back yard neighbor’s trees.<\/p>\n

Hot damn and hallelujah!<\/p>\n

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But first a little background to set the stage.<\/p>\n

Regular blog followers will remember that early last April I had my huge (almost 100′ tall as measured by the crane operator), dangerous and dirty Chinese Elm tree removed. Here we see part of the stump to the right side of my house and a very small part of the actual tree laying in the road out front (the road had to be closed for much of the day which required a permit from the city). Most of the tree had already been hauled to the landfill for composting.<\/p>\n

I’m including the photo because it shows the neighbor’s tree the eagle was in yesterday, directly behind and to the left of the stump. That tree is much closer to my house than it appears to be in this photo because I took it with a wide angle lens at only 15mm so both distances and angles are distorted. Because the tree appears to be far away I’ve made the photo larger than I usually do on my blog.<\/p>\n

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The red arrow marks the spot in the tree where the eagle was perched.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 100mm<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a different perspective at 100mm with my larger zoom lens that shows the eagle in the tree yesterday. That tree really is close to my house. The following images ware all taken with my 500mm lens from either my front yard or just a few feet away from the boundary between Shane’s yard and mine.<\/p>\n

Ok, that’s’ more than enough backstory. On to the eagle.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When I came outside I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had an unobstructed view of “him,” despite the inevitable clutter in the background. With the naked eye I thought he was a full adult but through my lens it soon became obvious that he wasn’t, not quite. More about that later.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

At first he didn’t give me any pose variety at all, other than turning his head one way and then the other. I took these shots from different places on the ground far below him so my shooting angle was fairly steep and the background varies.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/8, ISO 400, 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

A highly cropped portrait gives us a better look at three of the four reasons I know he wasn’t quite a fully mature adult:<\/p>\n