Persistence pays off!!

After taking a call from Nick Elms telling me about the winter fish kill on South Diamond Lake and the 100 or plus eagles I missed, I took a chance with mostly clear skies and headed back over to Lake Maria near Silver Creek, MN. After seeing a half dozen or so juvenile eagles periodically feeding on fish they caught out on the ice over the past couple of weeks, I figured this would be my last chance before ice out to get a couple of shots. Most of the time the eagles were way out of photo range as far from any access point as possible. This time, they caught a rather large sucker and took turns picking the meat off like a bunch of rowdy teenagers devouring a pizza. Once in a while a mature male would come swooping done and open a can of whoop ass on the juveniles in order to take over control of the fish.

Tons of more pics can be found HERE

The whole ordeal started out with a Kestrel eating a freshly caught field mouse on a wire on the southwest side of the park.







After leaving the Kestrel to his Sunday dinner, I hit the creek between Silver Lake and Lake Maria. Jackpot. Setting sun behind me, able to shoot from the car (eagles are pretty tolerant as long as you stay inside of a vehicle), and a half dozen eagles scatter about. The only thing which was bad was the birds were on the out limit of the 200mm f2.8 with the 2x converter. These are all crops.