Upde Designs

I have two apologies about today’s post.  First there are more eagle pictures.  I’m sorry but this series of images tells a neat story so I felt compelled to show you these images.  Secondly I apologize for the lack of sharpness of these images.  This juvenile eagle was flying very close to a fence and the auto focus kept jumping between the eagle and the fence so they are not tack sharp images. Aside from that these are some fun images.

You may remember I told you a couple of days ago how the juvenile eagles would time after time come up empty-handed and would then try to steal fish from the more successful mature eagles.  Well as I was sorting through my images from the Guttenburg shoot I had this series of images slated for deletion until I got to the last image.  Just a reminder you can click on the images and make them much larger and easier to see the detail.

I captured the first image in this series of the eagle coming in for a catch.  I could not get the image of him actually striking the water because he was behind the fence.  However as he circled and gained a little altitude it appeared at first glance that his talons were empty.

Jeanne and I went to a talk on eagles last year put on by a photographer from the Des Moines, Iowa area.  He wrote a book about the return of eagles to Iowa and had many wonderful images of eagles.

One of the things he said was that often times an eagle will look down at his catch and if the fish is small enough he will eat it on the fly so that he doesn’t have to defend his food while he eats it.

So this eagle is doing that and again when I first went through the images I though to myself… Young kid, doesn’t even realize he has nothing in his talons.  Boy was I wrong.

This fish won’t win any big fish trophies but it is at least food and this young eagle promptly devoured it  By the third frame of this series the fish was gone.  🙂

I love capturing images of eagles.  I can stand in the cold and watch them for hours having their little turf and food battles.  I enjoy watching them interact and even just sitting.  They are such a magnificent creature.  Don’t be surprised if you continue to see images of eagles from time to time on this blog.

That’s it for today gotta run.  Hope you enjoyed this young eagle’s success.  Thank you for stopping by.  Enjoy your day (each one is a gift you know) and please be careful.