WAITING FOR THE EAGLE - Jan-Eric Osterlund

*Waiting in the hide for the Royal Eagle to arrive*

One day during our visit to Finland I went with Paavo, our guide, to a hide situated at the top of a hill. We wanted to see the Royal Eagle close by. We travelled by snow mobile and had to get to the hide early and then be very silent not to disturb the eagles that would be scared by any movement or noise. The hide was quite comfortable and not easy to spot from the outside.

I don’t normally have images of myself, but Paavo captured this photo of me preparing my camera. I had a 100-500 mm lens with an extender that took it up to 700 mm. And the camera set on a small tripod, so we had a good chance of capturing the alluring bird. And I thought the image of the inside of the hide was quite interesting to show

But it was several hours’ wait and meanwhile I captured a few of the smaller birds that entertained us. The Royal Eagle himself appeared after a few hours and I will show you the photos of the eagles in my next post. Now you will have to do with this prelude of smaller birds!

This photo I included so that you can see the hillside, where we were based. The photo was captured with 175 mm zoom. At 09:30 in the morning, it is still quite dark and I used an ISO of 10,000 and a shutter speed of 1/1000. That means that the original image is quite grainy, if it is blown up, and each one of my photos from that day had been treated in Topaz for noise reduction. This is the great spotted woodpecker.

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Större hackspett). They chisel into trees to excavate food but they also drum for contact and to announce their territory. Its strong beak and shock-absorbing skull are perfect for finding food by pecking on trees.

*And this is the cousin, the grey-headed woodpecker (Gråspett)*

The great tit (talgoxe), common in England as well as in Sweden and Finland