I saw a post Facebook about a huge population of Eagles wintering or feeding from Onondaga Lake this year. My husband had mentioned something about it to me before but I didn't think much of it figuring there would be just a couple of eagles. It had been mentioned to him by a co-worker. Anyways long story short the article gave a count of forty plus Eagles and cited that some industries were keeping a certain section of the lake warmed so that it was attracting fish and keeping the water open (from freezing over). Being bored out of my mind and needing out I said let us check it out. We got to Destiny USA ( a giant mall) and found the creek walk which led to the spot. There was no light to work with as we got there late but we did see a few eagles. We determined to get up early the next morning to try again. I bundled up our little guy and packed his new camera to go with us. There were other photographers there but not as many as I had expected. They were quite friendly and one even let me borrow his 1.4 tel-extender to see how it worked. Unfortunately part of the walk way is closed off with fencing. From the conversations I overheard this is to keep people off of the eroding shoreline. Yep, the fence only keeps out the honest folks! All sorts of people were slipping in through a hole and or climbing over. How I wished I could get just a bit closer or had a 600 mm lens. Not knowing when a policeman would show up and wanting to teach our son right from wrong we just did our best to work from the barricade. There were lots of Mallards, Mergansers and Mute Swans also enjoying the warmer water and fishing. We saw quite a few Eagles in the distance hanging out on the ice and flying. I tried really hard but with the lack of lighting and not quite enough reach with my 400 mm lens it was difficult to get any great shots. As luck happened I did catch a few Eagles flying over. I was amazed at the amount of juveniles(under the age of 5) there were. It was quite cloudy and overcast so I shot in aperture priority mode at f 5.6 and an ISO of 3200 to soak in as much light as possible but also made my shots rather noisy and or grainy. In my opinion they are okay but not the "wow that is magnificent" shot that I had been hoping for. Well, I guess that is why we try, try, try again. It didn't take to long before I was freezing and needed to go get warm. We said goodbye to one of the photographers we had been talking to and hope to run into again. Then drove up to the front of Best Buy to shoot some Eagles resting in the trees. Now frozen and hungry we gave Panera in the mall some business (I nearly passed out at the bill for three drinks and three pastries). Afterwards we walked around the mall. When we left the mall the sky had opened some and let the sunshine peek through. We set out to find the Inner Harbor trail to try to find more Eagles but the two we saw flew some distance before we saw them. There were lot of crows though so I played with them a bit since I couldn't find anymore Eagles. Turns out the best photos of the day were not even of Eagles. One was a Great Blue Heron I saw hiding in the brush between me and Onondaga Creek. The other one was of a crow on a branch along that Inner Harbor trail.. Well, I hope you enjoyed the photos and possibly gleamed something good from this article. I will have to try again to get elusive "grand Eagle" shot. Thank-you for visiting! If you haven't already like Naturally Adrift Photo on Facebook for weekly updates. -Julie
Going stir crazy in the apartment and hungry for photographic adventure we decided to break out into the frigid weather to see what we could see! First we stopped at Fair Haven Beach State Park to use the heated bathrooms after our drive. As we drove about we saw an unusual sight, lots of swans on the ice of the pond! We had seen swans there last spring during migration but were surprised to see they had decided to stay. I'm not sure if they will make it with this "polar vortex" moving through. At this point there was some open water on the pond but very little and they would have to fly some distance over the ice piles to access Lake Ontario. After photographing the Swans we jumped back into the car for a short drive and quick warm-up to the Sterling Nature Center. There we re- bundled up our son and headed down the Lake trail. Once we were down to the lake, we were were greeted by great mounds and craters if ice and snow that stretched out quite a way into the lake and shiny balls of ice everywhere. For safety sake we stayed where we knew the actual shoreline was, you never know what or when that ice will break below your feet or what you could slip into and not get back out of! Our son went straight to play and loved the shiny bubble filled balls of ice that had replaced the smooth round colorful rocks of summer. The sun was shining brightly in the west. I played with photographing the balls of ice shining and glinting in the sun against the snow, occasionally getting down on ground level to photograph their beauty against the horizon. So what made all of these ice balls? Well, it was the lake and it's big waves on an extremely windy and frigid winter day. The water thrown into the air by the waves would freeze before landing on the shore and hence these beautiful and mesmerizing orbs of ice were born! Be sure to click on an image to see it full size. Thank-you for taking a moment to check out this bit of photography! Be sure to like us on Facebook to keep up to date and please feel free to leave some feedback.
-Julie Metott of Naturally Adrift Photo- |
Julie MetottNature Photographer, wife, mother, lover of outdoor adventure! Archives
November 2022
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