Eagle Shots and Back to Work

So, this past weekend was Easter weekend.  The kids were with Amy for the weekend, so I was stuck looking for things to do.  Friday afternoon (had it off due to Good Friday), I worked on the HDR shots from the night before and checked out a blues band at Suzy's.  Saturday was tough.  I pretty much just finished up grocery shopping and did a bunch of cleaning around the house.  Mike texted me and said he knew a good place for some shooting the next morning.  So Sunday morning, Mike stopped by around 8:30 and we got under way for a place called Mud Lock on Cayuga Lake.  I think it was Cayuga.  It was definitely a lake.  Well.  It was at the end of a lake.  Shut up.

So we got there, and immediately saw the bald eagle nest atop a man made tower.  There were a nesting pair, a male and the much larger female.  I switched to my 75-300mm canon telephoto lens, which is a super-cheap lens, cranked up the ISO some to get a super-fast shutter speed, and decided to get some shots.  There were a few guys already there with REALLY IMPRESSIVE lenses.  Lenses I want.  Really badly.  Anyway, here are the shots I got.

Mike waiting for action from the eagles.

After we were done at the lock, we headed over to the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge.  Which I'm sure is exciting for many people.  Like, Mike, for instance.  Who got REALLY excited for a crane right near the entrance.  Not a mechanical crane, but a bird.  Which, yeah, I guess if you didn't grow up with them on the shore nearly every morning (like I did), it's exciting.

So we got up to the little visitor's center and hung out a bit.  A volunteer came out and started in on all kinds of crazy bird stuff.  He was saying stuff like "There's blah-blah beaked honey crested blah blah" and in my head all I'm hearing is "birds birds birds birds".  He was pretty excited about it.  Mike asked about the birds in the picture above, and the guy just said "Yeah, those are swallows".  He seemed a little let down that we obviously didn't share his excitement.  We walked a little ways to an observation tower.  And looked at birds.  And grass.  And birds.  And water.  And birds...in the grass.  And birds...in the water.

woohoo...

We then got back in Mike's car and headed over a little boat launch area for a final few pics.

So that was my Sunday morning.  It was a really good time.

But....

I was kinda bored in the afternoon.  I decided that I wasn't going to sit out a full two weeks before starting back up the Chalean Extreme program again, and fired up Burn Circuit 1.  And this time, I was going to do good before/after pics.

Ignore the potty chair.

Potty chair.  Again.  Stupid potty chair.

I did notice some things being different this time to last time.  Firstly, I need to up the weights across the board.  Secondly, I'm MUCH more flexible in these exercises, able to go to much farther in my range of motion.

Anyway, I'm back into the workouts, and pumped for it.