Birding – Andrea Kappler Photography

Last night after an afternoon of birding with one of my photography girlfriends, we stopped in the parking lot of the Twin Swamps Nature Preserve (Posey County, IN). She was telling me about the trails there and the types of birds she’s seen when she’s been there in the past. The sun had just set and it was too dark for us to go on a walk, so we just sat there in our cars for a bit.

A short time later, a barred owl appeared and began hooting. I love their hoots, because it sounds like they’re saying “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you you all?” Instead of taking still photos of the owl, because it was too far away to see its face, I decided to take some videos of it hooting. I took two short videos and decided to take another one, so I could capture the entire hooting call. To our surprise, a second owl appeared and they hooted to one another from the same tree!

I can’t tell you how much joy I felt watching and listening to them. I’m a country girl, but I’ve lived in the city for the better part of my life. I never hear anything this awesome in my city neighborhood. I usually hear lawnmowers, leaf blowers, barking dogs, and the occasional wail of a siren from emergency vehicles racing past my neighborhood. I felt so blessed to be sitting in the solitude of Nature and witness this conversation between two creatures calling to one another.

Did you have any awesome nature experiences this weekend? If so, share them in the comments.

I recently fell in love with birding, thanks to some amazing photographer friends who’ve been coaxing me to come along with them. I’ve been putting them off for months now, telling them I’m more of a landscape photographer than a birder. But I’ve always loved birds and somewhere deep in my heart, I knew I wanted to take great pictures of them. Until recently, I’ve never really tried to find them or photograph them.

The third weekend in February, we all got up at crazy early times to meet at 4:30 am along I-64 and drive to Carlyle, IL, where there are eagles and eagle nests in the area around Lake Carlyle. Not long after we arrived there on a cold, gray morning, it started snowing. It was light at first, then it really started coming down!

It’s very challenging to shoot birds in a snowstorm, because your camera tries focusing on the snowflakes falling in front of the lens, the snow is getting your gear all wet, and most importantly, it’s COLD!!

It’s hard to see here, but there’s an eagle sitting in the nest at the top of that tree. I was surprised to see her/him when I looked at the image on my computer screen. Thanks to the crazy falling snow and the great distance from me, I certainly didn’t see it that day.

One bird we were looking for and finally found was pelicans. Unfortunately, that day they were on the opposite side of the marina at Lake Carlyle. This is a view of them from a 960mm focal length, which was as close to them as we could get. We kept wishing they’d take flight, but they never did.

One bird we saw plenty of was gulls (not seagulls). They were everywhere, flying all around us, so they were relatively easy to shoot. I need to practice shooting birds in flight and panning the camera with them as they fly. Gulls make for perfect practice subjects!

When we got to the Chain of Rocks area near Alton, IL, we saw the most amazing sight. There were over one hundred eagles in the trees there, not far from traffic buzzing by on I-270! I’m not exaggerating when I say there were over a hundred of them.

Juvenile eagles have brown heads and tails and they don’t look as majestic as the adults with their white heads and tails. They can be confused with hawks if you don’t know they’re immature adult eagles.

Here’s a picture of four adults and two juveniles in the first tree where we noticed they were sitting. This was just a drop in the bucket for how many we’d find in the neighboring trees. The following pictures are just tiny representations of the total number of eagles we saw sitting in the trees that day.

Another adult and juvenile on the branches below the top six birds.

Two more adults on the left side of the tree.

Six more adults and one juvenile.

Another tree with 4 adults and 5 juveniles.

Eight adults and eight juveniles.

Here’s a close-up shot of some of the eagles in the tree on the right.

These eagles were probably hanging around this area because there was a dried up body of water and it was filled with the rotting carcasses of dead fish. This is a juvenile eagle surrounded by and eating some of the dead fish. Thank goodness it was a cold day and we couldn’t smell the fish!

A close-up view of an adult eagle in one of the trees.

Four more adults and four juveniles.

Yet another tree with 10 eagles in it.

We couldn’t believe how many eagles we were seeing in this area! It was one of those things not too many people get to see in their lives, so I consider myself really lucky, as did the gals I was with that day. They go out looking for eagles all the time and they were amazed to see so many of them together in one area.

After taking as many eagle pictures as we could, we moved on to the Audubon Center in Riverlands, in West Alton, IL, where we found two adult eagles sitting on a stump in a middle of a lake there. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get any closer to them than this, which was almost 1000mm magnification with my lens.

The sun sets in a huge ball of fire in the west in Riverlands. Too bad there were so many power lines in the scene.

A small flock of ducks takes flight at dusk.

A few more ducks flying at dusk, with an airplane flying by overhead. We jokingly refer to airplanes as “mechanical eagles”. One of the many inside jokes between us.