1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 321mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nYesterday I had just turned tail and headed for home after an unproductive morning looking for cooperative birds when I spotted this Golden Eagle perched in a small tree directly in front of me and right next to the left side of the road. When I stopped my pickup to take a few photos the light angle wasn’t a good one and there were lots of twigs in front of the bird. I don’t like to flush birds, especially raptors, but eventually I had to pass by the tree on my way home so I fully expected the eagle to take off because I had to pass by so close. I was hugely surprised when it didn’t, at least not for a while.<\/p>\n
After I passed the eagle and looked back at it in better light I was a little too close for takeoff or flight shots of such a huge bird with my 500mm lens so I switched to another camera with my smaller zoom lens attached in case the eagle took off. Eventually it did.<\/p>\n
But given the shape of the small tree it was perched in the eagle had a potential problem during takeoff. While the bird was perched in the tree that thick vertical branch on our left was actually touching the front of its folded right wing. So how could the bird take off without hitting the branch with its wing on the first downstroke?<\/p>\n
The solution was to take off sideways which provided some rather interesting takeoff and flight postures. This is one of them.<\/p>\n
I like the unusual, nearly horizontal angle of the legs as the eagle pushed off sideways from the perch and the atypical shapes of the wings as the bird performs the awkward and complicated maneuver. And then there are those powerful feet and sharp and intimidating talons.<\/p>\n
For me the crowning glory (literally) is the striking signature field mark of the Golden Eagle, that golden nape hanging down on either side of its head which reminds me of the tresses of an aging, balding male hippie with too much hair dye at his disposal (I’m not sure why my mind goes there but it constantly does with this image.)<\/p>\n
There’s more to the story than this but I haven’t yet had time to process the other takeoff and flight photos so I’ll likely publish the rest of the images in a series and complete the story soon.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note: My “old hippie” reference is far from a disparagement. I tend to like and respect most old hippies.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In yesterday’s post I bellyached about Golden Eagles being one of my most difficult and uncooperative subjects. Methinks I should complain more often.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81689,"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":[338,5,334,642],"tags":[643,689,2216,146,153,3000,2738,4955,311],"class_list":["post-81684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-golden-eagles","tag-aquila-chrysaetos","tag-box-elder-county","tag-field-mark","tag-flight","tag-golden-eagle","tag-golden-nape","tag-takeoff","tag-unusual-posture","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/golden-eagle-7405b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lfu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81684","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=81684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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