ALBERTA BIRDS OF PREY CENTRE

jack lumber · Sep 14, 2007

The Alberta Birds of Prey Centre in Coaldale, Canada’s largest birds of prey facility, rehabilitates and releases injured birds of prey. Situated on a 70-acre wetland area site, the centre is a celebration of nature featuring the hawks, falcons, eagles and owls of Alberta. Every 90 minutes throughout the day visitors will see flying demonstrations where many birds are turned completely loose as part of their daily training and exercise.

Amanda , Red tailed hawk.

turkey vulture.

Lincon the bald headed eagle.

Mr Bojangles Great horned owl

And a barn owl showing the advantage of having 14 neck vertabrea!

LaFoto · Sep 15, 2007

Oh, wow. "Lincoln" and "Mr Bojangles" are the coolest here!
You got yourself VERY close-up to the birds, was it YOU YOURSELF who got that close to them, or did your LENS take you that close to them? Where you just one of an audience watching the show or did you get some special access to these birds?

That Turkey Vulture ... well, I guess his mother loved this face?

And I take it you are presenting these as you composed them inside your camera and never changed anything about composition by cropping?

Roger · Sep 15, 2007

really like the owl shots, nice tight shots....the lights in the background of the others are pretty distracting, hard to do anything about that in an enclosure I know....that turkey shot is cool, reminds me of a biker friend!

jack lumber · Sep 15, 2007

These shots are all straight from the camera Lafoto, taken with a canon 100-400, the birds are tethered to a perch, and you can get about 4ft away from them. Notice in #1 how she is going crossed eyed looking at the lens! Mr Bojangles was passed around the visitors to hold, and I was about 5ft away from him.
Roger, the lights are in fact a white plastic chain, if my photoshop skills were better I would have removed it.

ga_shooter · Sep 15, 2007

These are all really beautiful. The turkey vulture hands down is the ugliest bird that ever there was. I feel bad for saying that, but i can not help but point out the obvious here...