Where The Eagles Dare

I went eagle hunting yesterday… with a camera.

I went to Gillette Castle on the Connecticut River, the castle was built by William Gillette who was an actor who was known for playing Sherlock Homes, and it sits high above the Connecticut River on a bluff. It is now a state park.

There were two other people there at the castles that were bird watching and they told me I just missed seeing two eagles. One other then let me look through his telescope and I could just make them out in the distance.

This is a red tail hawk…

Do you know how hard it is to track a bird looking through the 500mm lens? This was taken at 280mm (at 500mm I couldn't track the bird), f11, ISO 280, manual focus (Auto focus kept on hunting and couldn't focus on the bird) and set to "Distance"

I did see some dragons though…

But they had turned to stone.

And they were hanging out here,

From the bluff you can see across the river to the Chester–Hadlyme Ferry dock on the Chester side of the river. The ferry started in 1769 and is one of the oldest continuous operating ferries in the country; the oldest being the Rocky Hill-Glastonbury Ferry.

Then about two miles down river you can see an open patch of water where many of the eagles hang out (except when I was there).