Sunday, February 03, 2008

Eagle Fest Results

The 2008 Cumberland County Eagle Fest was a great success this year. The last two years have been plagued by bad weather, but you couldn't ask for a better day than we had yesterday. I don't know total participant #'s, but I know some of the walks had 50-60 cars and I talked to countless people. The eagles put on a show all day long and there were many other great birds around. They had an excellent vendor exhibit hall set up at the local fire house too. Cumberland County really appreciates their eagles. They have 20 nesting pairs within the county, the most of any county in NJ. Sadly, the hot topic of the day was the recent local cutting of a tree in with a nest by some unknown idiot. Here are some pictorial highlights from the day:

A good ol' Turkey Vulture

This was a sight that didn't get old... an eagle would periodically stir up the Snow Geese. They truly looked like snow out there.

There's expansive habitat down in Cumberland County. Many of our sightings were of distant birds. This one, though, was a real crowd-pleaser.

A Red-tailed Hawk soaring overhead


Publish PostAs early as 3:00 we saw our first Short-eared Owl of the day. Around 5:00, his friends showed up and we had 4-6 of them around at different times.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like such an amazing time and I love all your wonderful photos! Wish I could have gone!

P. Ollig said...

I agree. Looks like you're already getting some good use out of your new camera.

How do you like it, so far?

Patrick B. said...

So far, so good! You hope that with about 600mm of total zoom (including camera "crop") that you'd have magical results, but it's not like that. You still need to be 10' away from a bird to get an almost-full-frame shot. The lens has been great though. The autofocus works well and all of those photos were shot handheld. Most of the photos shown here were taken pretty far away and cropped too.

Beth said...

Beautiful pics, Sweetie!

Owlman said...

Excellent shots, especially the Blad Eagle in flight!

Owlman said...

Hmm, noticed I spelled Bald Blad. I'm wondering if this could be the result of me going bald (slowly) and maybe I'm subconsciously channeling this pain into my keyboard. Then again it’s most likely the fact that I am an exceptionally lousy typer – still doing the two finger ping pong on my keyboard. Bald, bald, bald….

Unknown said...

Looks like great fun! WHat camera are you using? I guess I'll have to keep going back looking. :)

Patrick B. said...

Hi Lisa Marie,

It's a Canon 30D, 300mm IS lens, with a 1.4x teleconverter.