Immature Martial Eagle
Caption: A young martial eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) scans its surroundings from a lofty perch atop an old tree, Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Soon after this picture was taken, we heard the mother eagle calling anxiously for her offspring to return to the huge nest, which we could see in the upper branches of a tree some distance away.
After a couple of hesitant and unsteady attempts (right), the immature raptor finally managed to take off and return to the safety of its parent and the nest.
Camera: Canon EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi); Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM; Focal Length: 300mm; Shutter speed: 1/800; Aperture: f8; ISO: 400; Exposure compensation +1
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Tagged with: immature • martial eagle • wildlife
Filed under: African Birds
Scotch what a great shot. I really enjoy bird watching and trying to get some shots but not like this.
I would be interested to know how close you were given the lens you were using. Did you bracket the exposure or just manually adjust it?
Thanks Mike – appreciate your comment. We were some distance away and the shot has been cropped, original is horizontal with a fair amount of sky all around the bird. A longer lens, probably a 500 or 600mm, would have been ideal to get closer. I did manually bracket in that I took a couple of exposures with no compensation, then some at +0.7 (better) and also +1 (best).