Early Bird Gets the Fish

More bald eagle action from this past weekend at Conowingo. Last count was well over 130+ birds, plus more on the far side that you could only see by looking down from the dam itself. I'm half tempted to try a kayak run over to that side, but there's a bit too much risk involved, such as the dam opening up, or camera + lenses falling into the Susquehanna. With action as good as it's been on "the easy side" of the river, I'll probably just continue to shoot from the rocks there.

The ghille suit and lens wrap worked like a charm (when there's not throngs of other photogs around), and when I was there Saturday two people almost stepped on me coming down onto the rocks because they didn't know I was there. You can definitely tell that the birds know folks are around and are a tad more wary of coming in close. I was the second guy there at 5:40am on Sunday, and while suited up, the birds did get noticeably closer to where I was dug in. One landed in a tree about 20 feet behind me and saw me move to turn around, but couldn't quite figure out what he was seeing. Pretty cool to see the confused looks he was giving me while he was "trying to figure out why that bush was moving". A few hours later (10ish) I turned around and saw at least 35-40 other folks on the fenceline behind me snapping away. At that point, I figured the suit was worthless and took it off.

Needless to say, I'm very pleased with how everything is turning out and hope to spend a few more weekends down there – probably after Turkey Day.

Full gallery can be found here, or by clicking on the photo above.