I took a few pictures from about 100 yards away. I didn’t want to get any closer because I didn’t want to scare the birds off of what must be a relatively rare large mammal kill during a very tough time for them. As a result, the pictures are rather poor, taken at 560mm at f/8 due to the use of a teleconverter. That meant I had only one focus point available, so I was using manual focus for most of it. Expect blurry and low resolution, especially for the birds in flight pictures. These pictures are also cropped heavily to help get better views for identification.

If anyone has different opinion on the species, I’d be very interested in your thoughts. I see a lot of bald eagles down at my in-laws, and there was something a little different about these guys. Juveniles do vary so much, though. In the pictures with both birds standing on the ice, the left-hand bird has a patterning to the white bits and an eye patch that just doesn’t look normal for a bald eagle. He/she has a tail that features an almost all white coloration. The right-hand bird exhibits a bit of a buff colored cape around the back of the neck, and his/her tale is black with speckles. 

The crows in the pictures are handy for showing the relative sizes. The larger bird has a wingspan of roughly 2x a crow’s.

They did not make the “eek eek eek” eagle noises that I would have expected of bald eagles being harrased by crows. There was a more gutteral vocalization, but it now escapes me, as I didn’t think at the time to take a little video with the camera to record it. My memory isn’t dredging it up other than to remember that it was an unfamiliar cry to me. 

Thanks in advance for any insight offered. -Tig Tillinghast