Eagle hunting

Hubby and I went up to the Conowingo Dam today, because our neighbor told us it was good eagle country. Mostly I wanted to see pretty trees, with only a little hope that there would be birds there. So after a short walk

and scouting out the water for birds,

(I believe the lower bird is some sort or cormorant)

I saw evidence of a very ambitious beaver. This tree is a foot diameter

and a total goner. I'm surprised it did fall own in the wind yesterday.

Then I went down to the water, to maybe get some pictures of the shore. The trees weren't doing much color-wise, but I thought it was pretty enough.

I was getting ready to pack it in when hubby pointed out raptors up in the sky (lots of seagulls, so I was looking for something more interesting).

(in one of these frames, the bird is pooping)

Why, that sure looked like a gen-you-wine bald eagle! So I was snapping like crazy. Saw a juvenile swoop in and get a fish (sorry they're overexposed, I didn't have time to check settings!)

So once a fish was caught then all the birds came out to try to steal it.

There was a heron on the beach with the eagles, trying to get in on the fish action, but there was also this guy just posing for me.

I spy with my little eye...

...an eagle swooping in to snatch some fish.

(there are actually two eagles in this picture)

Finally I decided 180 pictures was enough. The ones where I didn't use the tripod didn't come out very well, and were very shaky (even with vibration reduction turned on!). There were some serious guys showing up just as we were leaving. One guy had a lens that was seriously 6 inches across, and like a foot or more long! A 500mm lens is 10 THOUSAND dollars! So I guess that means I'll never get the pictures I have in my head, where you see a nice crisp close up of an eagle in a tree. 

But, man, it was awesome. I'll definitely be back for another chance to hunt birds.


PS. I don't know how to force a picture to get a link to the full version during the upload process. So most of these pictures have a big version if you click on them, but some don't.