Bald Eagle Swimming to Shore

[Alex Hoover]

187358

This morning I headed over to Iona Beach for some bird watching. Towards the end of my trip, I saw an eagle swimming towards the jetty. I did not see him dive into the water, but I assume that he misjudged his flight while going after a bird (I think some kind of gull). You can just see some webbed feet sticking out of the water as he is dragging his catch to shore. He then swam to the beach and took off. I got some in-flight shots which show his catch a little bit better, but he was slightly angled away in the photos so I wasn't too keen on them. It's not the highest quality image (~50% crop), but I thought it was an interesting enough occurrence to post anyways.

Taken with a Nikon D500 + Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6
Taken at ISO 800, 500mm, f/8.0, 1/2500

[dankearl]

Alex, the crop hurt the image but I love Eagles swimming so I cropped it even more
but did some exposure adjustments and some Denoise.
Not award winning but certainly worth posting!

Eagle copy.jpg (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=187361&stc=1&d=1594432826)

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I like the placement of subject.

Crop posted by Dan is really nice.

[gail bisson]

Good behavioral image. Dan's repost is better but I think it may have hurt the IQ a bit. In the OP I would clone out the long blade of grass.
Love the prey's webbed foot sticking out of the water,
Gail

[John Mack]

A neat frame for sure. I like that that eagle is swimming. Don't think i have seen an eagle swimming on here before. The image quality looks pretty good for such a big crop.