Google Earth Pro. The yellow line measures the distance from me in my car to the tree with the eagle’s nest.
Why would a photographer take a picture of a barely visible eagle that is 284 yards away? Because it is there!
On the way to one of our grandson’s ballgames last night, I saw the unmistakable shape of a large eagle’s nest off in the distance. As we drove by the tree, I saw something sticking up from the top of the nest but it could easily have been a dark chunk of tree trunk behind the nest.
On the way home after the game, I decided to check it out. I pulled off the highway at 250th Street (map above), a seldom traveled dirt country road, and got out my “toy camera” and a 55-250mm telephoto lens. I knew the lens would be inadequate at a distance of nearly 3 football fields away, but you do it anyway because photographers can temporarily be lacking in logic, reason, and sensibility!
The original, uncropped image resized for the web.
With my camera ready to go, I waited for the traffic to clear on the highway. When no cars were visible from either direction, I drove down the highway until I was opposite the nest, pulled part way off the highway on the mostly non-existent shoulder, and clicked the shutter three times. It is very tiny in the frame but it is an eagle!
The center of the image at 100% “actual pixels” magnification.
This looks to me like a young Bald Eagle.
Links
My Inexpensive, Featherweight, “Toy” Camera Kit