Eagles day 2

The winter storms have passed for now. A gust of arctic air has followed in their wake. Temperature dropped from +9 to -2 °C last night, and crept another few degrees down while we were inside the hide today. However the sky cleared up and gave us much better light. Yesterday's session was shot mostly at ISO1600, with a period of about 90 minutes around noon allowing ISO 800. Today, ISO 400 was the gold standard.

The FA*600/4 continues to shine. It's a great lens for this kind of stuff, despite its noisy autofocus. The only thing I miss in my Pentax cameras now is a higher frame rate. I never thought I would say that, because I've always thought that timing was more important than rattling. However I see that it would be useful in such circumstances as I shoot now. In particular when one eagle lands on the bait to chase another away.

Tomorrow will be somewhat different; at a site specifically tailored to feeding goshawks rather than eagles.

The forecast says temperature could drop as far as -15 °C. Wonder what sitting still for 7 hours in that temperature will be like. I have plenty of clothes and will further wrap myself in a sleeping bag, so I'm pretty sure I will endure. Hopefully the camera batteries will endure too.

The picture is a golden eagle from today's efforts. Sorry about the intruding crow. I probably have some without that little bugger too, but they were not easy to lose.