Mrs. Eagle was on the nest this sunny morning with her three fledglings 18 miles north of my apartment in Boulder. I call her Mrs. Eagle, because I don’t know her first name. People say that she is bald, but they lie. She has a beautiful head of white hair, sort of like mine, only prettier and fuller.

She was feeding her babies a raw meat delicacy that she or Mr. Eagle had brought to them. I could barely see her or the fledglings, because they were so far away, well protected from human intrusion behind a fence in a field.

But once I had pulled out all the stops my camera found the family. Using my 100-400mm lens with my 1.4x teleconverter on my camera with its APS-C sensor, I got 896mm magnification. It was barely enough to reach Mrs. Eagle and her fledglings, who must have been half a mile away.

Mrs. Eagle and her Fledglings on their Big Nest

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Mr. Eagle was much closer and a lot less active. He posed for me on his favorite tree.

The Male Bald Eagle Calls

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For an hour I watched the Eagle family until Mr. Eagle flew off in search of more food. When he suddenly left his perch, I assumed that he spotted something tasty. But he didn’t seem to have anything special in mind, since he just flew in ever wider circles far above me. I guess he figured that it was lunch time, and he needed to get to work feeding hungry mouths.