A Bald Eagle on a ice flow looking for food

One of my favorite winter activities is locating and photographing American Bald Eagles. Their population is growing every year near my home in southeast Minnesota and is evidenced by spotting more and more of their unmistakable huge nests along the Mississippi river. Add their numbers to those of migrating eagles and once in awhile I get lucky and find a bunch of them in one place.

That was the case last week when I found about 20 of them surrounding an open area of water near the Mississippi River. The river for the most part was frozen over but this area was kept open by the warm water discharge of a nearby power plant.

The eagles congregate by these open water areas on the river to feed on fish, usually Shad, which also frequent the open water. That makes for a fun and challenging day of eagle photography. The fun is photographing and observing these large birds as they feed, communicate and interact and the challenge is operating the camera in below zero temperatures.

I guess every photographer figures out a process to get the pictures and avoid frostbite and I have mine. In extreme cold I stay in the car and wait for the eagles to stray over me at which time I get out and shoot until my fingers numb up and won’t work anymore. Then it is back into the car to warm up my fingers and erase all the out of focus shots I got with my numb fingers. Yup, I had to manually focus because of the lens extender I was using. All in all it is still a thrilling experience and I am usually rewarded with at least a couple of good shots.

Eagles perched in trees around open water lookng for fish to feed on

A Bald Eagle swooping in to grab a fish

This eagle flew close by allowing me a chance at a closeup shot