Golden Eagle lands in Spatia
 

From Bulgaria a few photos out of 300 I took last week from a hide under the care and direction of Dobromir Domuschiev, founder and raptor expert of www.spatiawildlife.com

If I can squeeze a video clip (out of 1hour + 40 mins + 5 mins footage)to fit without compressing it to zilch I'll do so. Otherwise I'll use one of Don DesJardin's links. He has seen a clip and said it's OK using flash or VLC. I'll try to make it wmp friendly.

Tough enough in hide almost stationary for 11 hours in zero conditions but the proximity to golden eagle is an amazing experience. Wonderful facility with great support and back-up by Dobromir. Upper hide went snowbound during week but I'll be back asap. Good hotel facilities and transport.

Central Balkan Range, east of Sofia, is as near as I'll say it is. I would not even dream of guiding any wishful videographer to the hides. Dobromir is the man for the raptors and while you're having a rest day he'll show you 14 other raptor species, eagles nests & roosts ... golden & imperial, long-legged buzzard etc. and in late spring, summer & autumn many many more species ... see website ... there's not a word of a lie on it. Great guy, thoughtful, fluent in English, German & Russian, who built the hides himself and knows when, where & how to bait them and get you there if you're interested and fairly fit.

Was you able to get any in-flight shots Brenden? Did you take still camera equipment as well as video with you (I couldn't make out if these were highly compressed still images or still-frames from a video)?

The last shot is the best for the colour background and 'visual' appeal of wings spread. I know how difficult it is to get decent images during dull grey days or light snowfall.

Beautiful!

As Tony said, I too love the last the most.

Those look like highly compress stills, because I can't really see the video noise a still from video would have.

Very beautiful!

Thank you both for kind words.

All images above taken with Canon Digital Rebel + Canon 100-400mm handheld.

Meanwhile my XM2 was running on a tripod and this is probably a poor quality .wmv clip ... please tell me how bad it is and I'll try to provide a link to a few better clips on another site ? Upload of .mov file failed.

Brendan,

Very nice pictures. I like the expression on the picture in the upper right.
The video clip is nice and I am sure you have some good original footage to boot!!!

If you do not mind divx Satge 6 is a good place to post larger full resolution files. I finally got the site working for me and I will be posting some footage up there over the year. It took a little fooling around to figure it all out.