Flight of the Eagle

Attached are five shots if a Bald Eagle taking off in flight. It was late in the afternoon and I had to shoot at f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/250 at 300mm (70-300mm lens). I was banking on the VR to eliminate the camera shake, it got rid of some but not all. The bird was 70 to 100 feet away and these had to be considerably enlarged which degraded the quality even more. A little disappointed in the quality but it's still a cool series.

Those are great pictures sir! The raptors are incredible subjects.

Recently I got to make a shot of a bald eagle myself however mine is nowhere near as cool as your's are...I did however get very lucky a few months ago...on the way to work I found a baby red-tailed hawk on the roadside...I "rescued" him if you will because he was just sitting there in the road fixing to be ran over the way people drive around here. I was given the special opportunity to hold the baby raptor in my hands. I called the zoo at about 10 AM that morning and let them know I was going to bring them a fresh out of the nest hawk sometime that afternoon...the fledling hung out with me all day at my shop...at noon he surprised me because he flew out of the garage over to the AC unit...he sat there and slept until about 3 PM at which point I went over and tried to feed him something...he didn't do anything so I whistled at him...he looked at me a flew away!!! I guess he was tired! LOL

The survival rate among these raptors especially in or around the cities is not good. This one probably was weak from starvation. You would not have been able to get anywhere near this bird, even if it was a juvenile, if it had been in good health. At least you got it away from the traffic and gave it another chance.

Those talons pierced my leather landscape gloves no problem! The bird was completely docile...when I whistled at it it's eye's popped open liked it was frightened or something and it took off just like that...thankfully it didn't decide to fight I suppose.

Here's my eagle shot..like I said it doesn't even rate any comparison to your fine pictures...