Washington State Eagles

Thanks to a post and then some advice from Mike (umphotography) we visited the eagles at the Nooksack and Skagit rivers in Northern Washington state last weekend.

The weather was clear and not too cold and we took boat tours on the rivers. We saw over 160 eagles in four hours Saturday on the Nooksack and about 50 on the Skagit in three hours. The salmon are about done returning to spawn and so the food supply for the eagles is going away. They come from Alaska when it freezes.

I highly recommend the area in season, which begins in December, for anyone interested in eagles.

I'm not really a BIF photographer, mostly I just do hummers a couple of times a year, so your comments and suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures.

1

Those are some positively stunning shots, Bob! Thanks for sharing them; particularly fond of the in-flights....just wow

Great shots Bob! #2 is the winner for me. Hopefully I can make it to there this month.

Very nice set!
#2 as my fav!

Nice Job Bob

Looks like they are about done from when I went out. We saw 400. This area is a cherry patch. Never seen so many balds in one place

Thanks for the comments guys. It was a great experience and a lot of fun seeing so many eagles.

Yes Mike, it was down from what you saw according to Cole but we still saw a lot of eagles. We didn't find many feeding so were not able to get super close to them. It was still great and I think the weather was a lot better when we were there. As you can see it was very clear and sunny both days.

They are all good, but and 6 stand out for me, I think that YOU should be the one telling US what we need to do... heheheh
Very well done, I'm really glad that you got to see and shoot what you did, I'd like to do that someday.

Randy

umphotography wrote in post #17859073
Nice Job Bob

Looks like they are about done from when I went out. We saw 400. This area is a cherry patch. Never seen so many balds in one place

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forum: Birds

Whoa!

for someone who's not a BIF photographer, yours came out great! i went up to the Nooksack myself a couple of times, but didn't see much action... the birds were there, but too far out on the gravel bar halfway across the river...

#2 is just fantastic.

Best way to get on these eagles is through the tour boats. Skagit has power boats. Nooksak is river rafts. Ive been 2 yrs in a row. Go on a boat and your gonna get right up on the eagles.

Best time to go is in Early December but we had a late salmon run this year. I go to the website and watch the counts

https://www.facebook.c​om/Skagiteagles/?fref=​ts

All very nice but number 2 is the winner.

Thanks for the kind words guys. I think #2 is going to get printed.

Nice shots, Bob. The second one is a beauty!