This is my week to see Bald Eagles! Thanks to Greg Braun I was able to observe a nesting pair of them, with their chick, at a remote site in Martin County. Greg’s the Executive Director of Audubon of Martin County. In the interest of the parents and child I’m not revealing the location. But I was able to get some distant photographs.

We had to walk through water halfway to my knees in places, then follow a game trail. Finally, we stopped about 100 meters (a little more than 100 yards) from the nest, up in a pine tree.

There were other trees in between and the afternoon sun was behind them, so it was hard to get good photos. This is a reduced, full-frame image, from which the photo above was cropped.

There’s a chick in the nest but I was never able to get a picture of it.

Here’s Greg, using his spotting scope as a telephoto lens for a small digital camera. He got a good shot of the chick this way.

And one of his photos, showing the chick having a look around.

I tried it with my camera, but wasn’t so successful.

Next time I go there I’ll bring my telextender and tripod. And some high, waterproof boots!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Birding, Eagle Watch, Other Nature Trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.