alloutdoors

Nice shot! I remember years ago, probably in my teens, I was walking down a similar trail while hunting and had a hawk go zipping into some pines off the side of the trail. After some sounds of a brief struggle the hawk emerged with a grey squirrel just like in this photo. Here's a similar shot from one of my homebrew game cams of a barred owl taking a frog from the surface of a small pond in the early spring.

Thanks everyone! Here's a couple more owl pics. And this is what the drive home was like. There's a road under there somewhere. I think. This is more or less what the first three and a half hours of the drive looked like.

Thanks everyone, glad you enjoyed them. Thanks Tom. It looks like Kyle got some really nice eagle shots at your place this weekend from what I've seen so far. Wanted to get him up to see the owl but he had to work. May try again in a couple weeks if they are still hanging around.

Drove up to Massena yesterday looking for the great gray owls that have been spotted there recently. Located one just before the storm set in. Photographed it for two hours then headed home. It's a four hour drive in good weather but yesterday it took six.

Nice try. The difference in beak depth is one of mere millimeters. It's not something you can measure without having the bird in hand. On top of that there is overlap between the sexes, males on the upper end can exceed females on the lower end, so even if your supposed change in appearance existed it wouldn't be conclusive. The beak depth measurement is also not used on it's own, it's part of a formula which also includes a measurement of hallux length. Let's get one other thing straight too, you didn't come in here offering an opinion nor did you qualify your remarks by saying they were based on your (limited) observations. You stated unequivocally that a particular eagle was a female based on some imaginary black/grey eye patch that nobody aside from you has ever seen. Then when you were called out on it you suggested that anyone who didn't see what you see should... let's see how did you put it, oh yes... get their bifocals checked. I never said that it isn't ever possible to determine the sex of a bald eagle based on visual observation. With experience you can certainly learn to distinguish a large female from a small male and be right quite often, but there are also plenty of birds of both sexes in that overlap range that will confuse even the most knowledgeable expert.

I quite literally have no idea what you are talking about. I see a rather low resolution image of an eagle in a snowstorm with a shadow under its brow. Since you and your friend are so convinced of your observations I will simply encourage you to write them up and get them published in an appropriate journal. What you are claiming has never been described by anyone, not even people who have spent their entire professional lives working with these birds. Once you do that, feel free to get back to me and rub it in my face to your hearts content. Until then you are just some random guy on the internet spouting off silly theories that fly in the face of hundreds of years of professional experience and observations which say otherwise. Thing is, I'll rely on the people who I know and spent the better part of a decade working with who are legitimate experts on the subject. Without the efforts of those people it's likely that your friend wouldn't even have eagles nesting near her house.

If you dig through some of my older threads on here you can find some pictures I've posted before of my rig. Or look here: http://www.shadowhillsphoto.com/about/ Most of the photos I posted here were taken with a Canon 1DX and 600mm f4 IS II plus 1.4x III teleconverter. A couple were taken with the 7D Mark II and the same lens combo.

Thanks! Yes, the eagles will be going up soon. I haven't actually even finished going through all the photos from the trip yet. I'm hoping to have some time over Christmas because I'm planning on making some changes to the entire sales side of the site, I can offer true fine art prints as well as prints on canvas, metal, acrylic, etc. but those options aren't currently represented on the site. For the time being, I do have a few more eagle photos posted to my Facebook page that you can check out. facebook.com/shadowhillsphoto

There is no gray or black above the eye of a mature bald eagle. What I think you are looking at is the shadow of the brow, which is going to look lighter or darker depending on the lighting conditions. Even if there was a varying patch of gray or black you couldn't just declare that it's sex specific without capturing a number of birds to conclusively determine the sex and compare that against the color. That's how science works. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

I'll bite, what makes you think it's a female? Aside from the females tending to be larger I've never seen a credible source claim that you can visually distinguish between the two. Size isn't going to help with an eagle out in the wild unless you are looking at a mated pair together.

Went down and spent a few days with a turkey hunting buddy from PA who happens to live about 25 minutes from the Conowingo dam in Maryland. I spent two and a half days at the dam photographing the eagles that gather there during the fall and winter.

Close, but they aren't color phases. The adult males are grey, adult females and juveniles are brown.

Time to update this. Sealing took longer than planned. Cure time for the Coat-It is supposed to be 12 hours at 70° but when the weather turned cool it was more like 48+ hours. We finally got one last day that went back up to about 80° so I dumped the rest on the night before (almost half the can), dragged it out in the driveway before I went to work the next morning, and it was cured and bone dry when I got home. Then the top was sealed with poly. And painted. Frame for camo. Conducted sea trials this morning, worked great! It's plenty buoyant and stable. I'm going to start bringing a paddle in the future, I wouldn't hesitate to cross a small body of water on it. Didn't have anything terribly interesting to shoot this morning, but here is a beaver lodge to show the unique perspective you get with the camera this close to the water.

Here's a project I've been working on, hope to get this out on the water and start getting pictures from it in the next few weeks. This will be used while wearing waders in relatively shallow water. Tomorrow all the seams and joints are getting filled with marine epoxy paste and then the bottom and sides will be sealed with Coat-It. The top deck will get a few layers of poly. After that I will be building a frame out of PVC to support a camo cover. When I'm all done this should more or less look like a muskrat house to any ducks or other critters I want to sneak up on. My camera and lens will be about 8" over the water which will provide a very unique eye-level perspective when shooting waterfowl. Stay tuned. Foam cut to fit. This is from the bottom after cutting the opening in the foam and framing the cockpit area. The 4x4 in the center of the bow area is what anchors the camera mount. Quick release plate for my gimbal mount. Bottom deck installed, ready to be sealed. With the camera mounted.

More air show photos, hope people aren't getting tired of these. The UH-72 Lakota they jump from.

Thanks, I've had a wholesale change in my camera body lineup in the last month. After picking up the 1DX I sold off my 6D and replaced it with a 7DII. This was the first time out for the 7DII and it did quite well. These shots are a mix from both bodies.

Thanks, that one and the blurred afterburner shot are two of my favorites from the day.

We started down at the 90 but didn't stay there long with how hot it was in the sun. We walked up to the main stretch and sat in the shade near the top, I was walking along the top in front of Race Control to get these. I'm not sure how many people the 90 grandstand holds, but I think every single one of them jumped in unison when the fireworks went off during the anthem. I was hoping they might have arranged a flyby from one of the jets at Stewart this weekend but no such luck.

Since an airshow alone wasn't enough fun for one weekend, I went out to the Glen with my father and son for the IndyCar race today. I didn't spend all that much time shooting, but did have some fun playing around with my wide angle getting some scenic slow shutter speed panning shots. Scott Dixon pumps his fist as he takes the checkered flag for the win.

Not spiders, they are beech blight aphids.

TAC DEMO F/A-18 at the New York Air Show.

Spent the day at the NY Air Show at Stewart International in Newburgh. This is just a sample of my first edits.

I was out in the kayak again this past Sunday morning when this guy flew by. He was at a bit of a distance but I managed these shots. I would have liked to have gone after him and gotten a bit closer but I had promised my wife I would be home at a certain time to watch the kids so had to settle for these.

Thank you, that's quite a compliment. And thanks to everyone else who posted as well. Photography is something I really love doing and I'm very glad that others can get some enjoyment from it as well.

Went out this morning hoping to get some kingfisher photos, but ended up with more herons instead. I'm a lot happier with these than the ones from the other day though. Watching one spear and eat a good sized crayfish was pretty cool.