Upde Designs

Happy Saturday!

I have Eagles for you today.  Yesterday I had to go to the Quad Cities to take my laptop in for a new battery.  I had decided earlier in the week that I was going to check out Lock and Dam #14 at LeClaire, Iowa as my friend Burt had said the eagles were there.  So after dropping off my laptop I headed over to the dam.

The shooting conditions were terrible.  If I hadn’t had to take my laptop to the repair shop I would have taken one look at the weather and said I’ll go to LD#14 another day.  Gray sky, foggy, biting wind, occasional mist and downright cold.  I knew it wasn’t going to be a banner day when I pulled into the parking lot and saw only 3 people on the observation deck.  Usually it is packed and there are people down on the rocks (as you can see in earlier posts.)

I walked up to a lady closest to me and asked her if there had been any action.  She turned around, gave me a look (like duh) and said no and then turned around again.  I noticed that there was one adult eagle sitting on the “eagle tree” so I thought I might as well get my gear and see what I could come up with.

Turned out it wasn’t too bad (as far as eagles go.)  There were four adults, one young adult and later two juveniles showed up.  The young adult provided most of the action but occasionally the mature ones would take a stab at getting lunch.

I have to admit I went back to my car a couple of times to warm up.  My body was okay but my hands and face were like ice and the camera and lens needed drying off and warmed up.  Anyway I used that as an excuse for going back to the car.  🙂

This young adult couldn’t handle this large fish.  He never got more than a few feet in the air when he lost the fish.  He made several attempts to recover it with the same results.  😦

It took me all the way to Dubuque before I felt warmed up.  On the way back I almost hit a fox.  He was trying to cross the four lane highway at an intersection and was confused running from one side of the intersection to the other.  Fortunately I was able to slow down and miss him.  I followed him for about a mile hoping to get a shot of him but he took off across a field so he was safe but no photo opportunity.

That’s it for today.  Probably more eagle pictures tomorrow as I have a bunch.  I shot 1,229 images yesterday and I was happy with the results.  I really like the Tamron 150 – 600 mm lens.  Very sharp and fast focus plus lightweight enough to hand hold.  I used a tripod and gimbal most of the time yesterday but missed some shots because of the tripod.  There were some throw away images but for the most part I mainly threw away duplicates.  At 11 fps the D4 captures a lot of duplicates.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.