What kind of bird is this?

juliejules

We were motoring up the Connecticut River on Saturday, and I was at the helm when I saw this huge thing in the tree. At first I wasn't sure it was a bird, because it blended in so well with the dead tree on which it was perched. My friend Bob took the wheel and brought the boat around for another pass while I hurried down below to grab the camera. We were all in awe of this creature. It's definitely the biggest bird I've ever seen in the wild. I'm guessing it was 3 feet from the top of its head to the end of its tail feathers. I snapped off a bunch of shots with the 70-200mm lens and 1.4x extender. Here are 2 of them. I cropped them a ton.

Is it a Falcon?

jwear

maybe a juv bald eagle

Dick on Aruba

Beautiful bird, nicely captured.

Thanks for sharing.

Dick.

gluwater

jwear wrote:

maybe a juv bald eagle

The yellow beak tells us it is a juvenile Bald Eagle. There really isn't anything else in the US that is that big besides the Golden Eagle and they have a black beak.

juliejules

Wow thanks! An eagle. Coolness.

Harryb

Very cool a juvenile bald eagle. Good captures.

juliejules

Harryb wrote:

Very cool a juvenile bald eagle. Good captures.

Thanks Harry! I'm not a much of a bird photographer, but I got lucky with this one. Right time, right place.

I'm really excited about it because bald eagles are so rare. Once jwear and gluwater identified it, I googled bald eagles and discovered that this bird is probably one of the offspring of some eagles being watched by an Eagle Cam on Barton Island on the CT River. Here's a link if anybody is interested:
http://www.nu.com/eagles/default.asp

dbaker1221

great shots of a young bald eagle!

David Taylor

Great shots of a truely majestic bird. Well done