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Thursday, April 12, 2012


As we always do, we went to the interior of British Columbia, Kamloops, to visit family over Easter. On the way in, we saw many eagles including ones in the nest that I had photographed last year. So Saturday morning I was up at dawn and off about 15 km to where this nest is located. Spent about an hour walking towards the nest, when the female would leave and call for the male, then away so they would go back to the nest. I assume there were eggs in the nest and I didn't want the birds to be out of the nest for long. Used my Pentax K-r as it has better high ISO than my K20, and it has a faster shooting rate. Sigma 170-500 on a tripod most of the time, but stopped using the tripod to try to get better in flight shots.

292 shots later, I have a few that I am happy to post. The real challenge when the birds were flying is trying to locate them with the lens at 500mm. Had to zoom out to 170, then back in. Really quite hairy and exciting to get some reasonable shots. It was a beautiful morning, too!





 
When I was done, I spent a bit of time shooting around an old hop processing factory and the homes that were company homes. In the 1950's hops were grown here for Molson Breweries.Converted to Black and White.




 And back on the bird theme, these are from April 1. We saw Trumpeter Swans in a pond near our house, so I was out there with the 500mm lens at this time too.  Unfortunately, as I approached, the swans swam to the other end of the pond - it is a big one- and I really had to crop the shots. 





Then, when I was getting frustrated that the birds were so far away, the swans took off, circled around me about three times and flew off.  I got a few reasonable shots, this being one:



 Thanks for looking.