CATCHING AND DROPPING

Bald Eagle, Mississippi River, at the bridge between Sabula, IA and Savannah, IL

Nice weather again today made many people go out this weekend and look for Bald Eagles along the big river. The break-up of the ice on the Mississippi opens new opportunities for the eagles. They like to catch fish and more open water means more opportunities. There are some places along the river that the birds obviously prefer and visitors can watch a great show of performance sometimes. This adult eagle had picked up a fish from the ice that was dropped by another bird before.

This 2-3 years old juvenile had dropped a fish several times before finally claiming it. Dropping the catch often leads to a total loss because countless Ring-billed Gulls wait for their opportunity to steal a fish from the eagles.

Nikon Z6II, Nikon FTZ adapter, Sigma 150-600mm / f5-6.3 DG OS HSM S

INTERESTING GULL

Great Black-backed Gull, Mississippi River, lock & dam #14, LeClaire, Iowa

On my way back from a business trip I stopped briefly at lock & dam #14 after crossing the Mississippi River. The pool below #14 near LeClaire, Iowa has been often a good place for watching and photographing Bald Eagles. Unfortunately the relativ mild winters during the last couple years led to a drastic decline in the numbers of eagles that spend the cold season at this location. In addition some trees, used as a perch by the eagles, have died and had to be removed. They have been replaced by some man-made wooden structures but I have not seen any eagle using them.

I saw a couple Bald Eagles, circling high up in the sky, but none of them was within the range for a photo. As always, some Ring-billed Gulls were catching fish and among them I saw two Great Black-backed Gulls. They breed in northeastern North America at the Atlantic coast but may wander inland during the winter. To make it clear, I’m never one hundred percent sure about identification of gulls but I think this one is a Great Black-backed Gull in its first winter. However, there are similarities to a young Herring Gull and if someone can give me a second opinion I will appreciate it.

So how about the photography? I only had a few minutes to make a picture and since I haven’t aimed the lens at birds in flight for a while, I was a little “rusty” and missed a number of shots.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER STORIES 2017 #6 - WATER FOWL MIGRATION

Mississippi River, Mud Lake

I wrote that before, Mud Lake Park is never twice the same and it seems to be not difficult to come back with different impressions all the time. Today thousands of gulls had gathered on the last remains of ice and hundreds of ducks and mergansers were on the water. We saw Canada Geese, Buffleheads, Canvasbacks, Common Goldeneyes, Mallards, and dozens of Common Mergansers. Bird migration is in full swing since about two weeks already. The first Red-winged Blackbirds are here since a few days, a sure sign of spring. Birders on the IA-Bird Google Group reported about migrating Snow Geese and White-fronted Geese in five digit numbers. I have seen only a few thousand of them ten days ago at Cone Marsh in Iowa. Most of them left obviously in the morning, just before I arrived, but it was still quite impressive.

Weather was changing fast today and so was the scene on the river. Colder air moved in and as you can see in the background fog built up over the Mississippi very quickly. When the last shaft of sunlight hit the gulls on the ice I was ready to make the click for today’s photo. Usually I would clone away single birds in the sky that are the size of a little dot in my landscape pictures but today the ducks and geese flying over are part of the story in my image.

LEARNING IT THE HARD WAY

Sometimes magic happens when you are out there shooting. This evening at Ice Harbor in Dubuque the low sun hit the last patch of ice under an angle that made it appear in a dark blue. In addition the warm colors of the building across the marina reflected in the open water between the broken floes. To make it even nicer, one of the numerous gulls landed in the right spot…

Well, it could have been a good photo, if the photographer would have paid attention to the settings in camera…!! For some reason I accidentally changed the picture quality from RAW to a low resolution JPEG. You may not see a big difference here in the blog, because the final jpg’s here are small, but good enough for posting them on the web. What’s out of consideration is a large, high quality print. The bad news is that I shot the whole day with the wrong settings. I guess some lessons can be learned only the hard way…😉