Eagles of Alaska In Flight
On the hunt for prey
Here's a once-in-a-lifetime event captured on film....
The fellow sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck never realized the show he was missing.
(620 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
The little duck watches as the Eagle speeds straight at him at about 40 mph.
(760 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
With perfect timing, the duck always dove and escaped with a mighty splash! Then he'd pop to the surface as soon as the Eagle flew past. This was repeated over and over for several minutes. I worried the poor duck would tire and that would be the end of him.
(1,040 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
A second Eagle joins the attack! The duck kept diving "just in time", so the Eagles began to dive into the water after him!
(1,150 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
After several minutes the Eagles got frustrated and began to attack each other. They soon began to dive vertically, level out, and attack head-on in a good old-fashioned game of high-speed "Chicken". Sometimes they banked away from each other at the last possible second. Other times they'd climb vertically and tear into each other while falling back toward the water. (The duck catches his breath at the right side of this picture.)
(900 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
A terrible miscalculation! The luckiest shot of my life catches this 100 mph head-on collision between two Bald Eagles.
(1,320 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
One Eagle stayed aloft and flew away, but the other lies motionless in a crumpled heap. The lucky duck survived to live another day.
(486 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
It's sad to watch an Eagle drown. He wiggled, flapped and struggled mostly underwater. He finally got his head above water and with great difficulty managed to get airborne. To my astonishment, he flew straight toward me, and it was the most wretched and unstable bird flight I've ever seen!
(620 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
The bedraggled Eagle circled me once - then lit atop a nearby fir tree. He had a six-foot wingspread and looked mighty angry. I was concerned that I might be his next target, but he was so exhausted he just stared at me. Then I wondered if he would topple to the ground. As he tried to dry his feathers, it seemed to me that this beleaguered Eagle symbolized America in its current trials.
(1,200 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
My half-hour wait was rewarded with this marvelous sight. He flew away, almost good as new.
(1,400 mm effective Focal Length) Full View
Received over the transom from "samrprof" via "johnross".
Photographer and author unknown.
Here are some bonus pics from another Alaskan. The sender says:
All of these photos were taken on the Homer Spit years ago. They (the eagles) were being fed by the Eagle Lady, Jean Keen. I am surprised you did not catch on to that. The last time I saw this string of photos they were trying to claim they were taken near Olympia, Washington.
Feeding the Eagles
In January the weather was so cold that the bald eagles were cruising over our houses looking for helpless cats to make a quick meal. Some kind souls decided to feed the eagles down at Goose Spit so they would survive the cold spell.
A former teaching colleague took these photos in front of his home.
They are incredible!
Feeding the Eagles! . . . . . Comox, B.C., Vancouver Island, Jan. 2009.
Here are the men who were feeding them, pretty amazing to get this close!
It was not too long ago, that the American Bald Eagle was an endangered species ??
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