Greetings all.

I went in search of the eagles 4 times last week and only managed to find them once.  It was a crazy week of weather here in NJ with heavy rain, strong winds and some coastal flooding.  Did this have anything to do with the eagles not being around last week?  Who knows?

January 12, 2024

The pair  was  perched on top of the cell tower which is across the street from their pond when I arrived around around 9:00am.

It was a crystal clear morning with bright sunny skies which make for some perfect photography conditions.  This morning, knowing that I'd have such great light, I set up my camera to take some 'super' close up photos.

They sat together for about 15 minutes and I took a few close ups before the male flew off.  Unfortunately, I missed the take-off.  Hey it happens!

In this photo, the male is on the right side and the female on the left

The male surveying the surroundings

After the male departed, I turned my camera to the female and was able to get this photo.  I love the gesture of her sharpening her talons as well as the deep blue sky which gives the photo some pop!

Female sharpening her talons

Eagles will take off into the wind and once I saw that she had turned to face the wind, I focused my camera in tight and was able to capture these 'lift off' images

I liked this photo where you can see the shadows of her wing across her face.  It was right after lift off and she still hasn't raised the landing gear.

For any photographers who may be reading my blog and wondering about my gear, I plan on doing a whole blog post on Gear but on this morning, I was using a Canon R7 camera a Canon RF100-500 lens coupled with a 1.4x teleconverter.  This gave me an effective focal length of 1132mm!  Crazy long.

We had some snow last night and am hoping to get out and hopefully get some photos of the eagles in the snow this week.  Keeping my fingers crossed!