Bald Eagle Nest

Recent discovered this active nest. It's on the water at the county lake, which is also home to Wolf Creek Nuclear Generating Station. I'm including a google map showing the nest location and my shooting location. I'm not sure if I'm having a focus issue with either my camera or lens. The distance was about 1,200 ft, there's no way I can get much of a bird to fill the frame, and getting closer is not possible for now. It's heavily posted, and the facility has cameras capable of zooming into cars traveling up and down the interstate, which is about 10 miles away. I was shooting on a tripod. Lighting was horrible, dreary, overcast, drizzly cold day. Should I be able to get sharper images at that distance?

Google Map

1207 feet is a long way to be shooting something, even with a 600mm lens. The images look fine for that distance. Birds of prey can vary in their tolerance of human activity around their nest. Most species will fly away if someone approaches too close. That could be half a mile for some and others may not care in an urban environment. There was a Bald eagle nest abandoned near here about ten years ago due to all the people flocking to the tree. There are areas at some parks that are marked off limits by the USF&W Service to keep people at a respectable distance from Bald eagle nests. If the birds build a nest in a busy area then getting close probably isn't going to be an issue, but when it's built out of the way it's best for the eagles or other raptors to have their space so they don't abandon the nest.

Thank you for your reply. What has me questioning my focus, is when I zoom in on the LCD screen to check, and the Eagle looked horrible. Is it the distance is so far beyond what would be in tolerance for autofocus? While out there I was all over the scale with the MFA. Finally just gave up and left it centered at the 0. Also I had to run my ISO at 1600 to keep my shutter speed up, and that may have some impact on the images. When shooting with this lens I always try to keep it around 800.

The nuke plant does a great job with promoting nature. They own all the ground around this lake. The area where I was shooting from is fenced off and marked for viewing the eagle nest, even has designated handicap parking in the weeds. They also have a trail on the opposite side of the road, complete with a viewing tower, that is an old grain silo converted by the plant, and an enclosed viewing platform for waterfowl.

The lake is very popular for fishing, and there are boats that can go into this area by the nest. The caveat is, do you keep spare props on board? I've taken my boat, within a mile of this and turned around after seeing all the submerged trees on my depth finder. I think the water depth around this nest is about 30ft. The lake is man-made to supply cooling for the plant. They just dug a big hole in and near the plant, this end is just flooded, no clean out, so all the big trees are submerged.

The distance is what's killing the quality. Cutting your distance to the bird to under 300 feet would help a lot. Maybe get out on a boat and get shots of them fishing? I'm looking at the idea of getting either a canoe or kayak to photograph off the water. Around here most waterfowl aren't close enough to shore to photograph.