Eagles at 700 #1

I had a prolific shooting day up at Yakumo with the eagles.........................




And all these shots (and more to follow, as I said I took a lot of photos) were with the 1.4 teleconverter on the 500f4. Almost all were handheld too.

We started off upstream, the weather was pretty nasty all day. Snow, sleet, rain and hail. The roads were slushy and our car got filthy sue to all the spray (it was a surprisingly mild day). Not so many eagles up the valley..............this White Tailed was the most photogenic.

This coy looking Stellers was cowering behind twigs by the side of the road............

We saw lots of a rare thing today.................birdwatchers. There was a tour bus full of them in Yakumo, we had seen another tour bus yesterday too in Sawara. I felt sorry for the birders in Sawara as it was virtually birdless (did the guide not know the gyrfalcon didn't return this winter?) but at least in Yakumo they had the eagles.................

These shots were from the start and end of the day. The bulk of the action occured near the rivermouth and I'll cover that over the next few days.

There were still a few live salmon in the river. As it was so mild I could walk out to the mouth of the river (usually it is way too cold and the snow is way too deep). White winged Gulls were feasting on the salmon corpses...............

I took a lot of eagle pics near the rivermouth but to be honest I would have been happy with only my results from upstream (all the eagle photos in this post)................

More to follow.....................