Bald Eagles Take Flight

December 27, 2025

I spent most of the day at Lake Manawa, camera in hand, standing still while something ancient and powerful moved all around me.

Bald eagles don’t simply exist in a place, they command it. Their presence is quiet and overwhelming all at once. Resilient. Watchful. Unbothered by cold, fog, or time itself.

As a kid in the ’90s, my Dad used to bring me here. We’d slowly circle the lake for hours, pulling over again and again at different points along the shoreline, hoping for a glimpse. Sometimes we’d see one. Sometimes more. Every sighting felt like a gift: brief, sacred, unforgettable.

More than 30 years later, I’m back. This time not just watching, but documenting — trying to capture the rawness and haunting beauty of both this place and the eagles that call it home.

Saturday was my first outing with my new Canon RF 200–800mm lens, and it didn’t disappoint. Crisp frames of eagles gliding low over the water. Others perched high in the trees near the riverbank. Some resting on islands of ice, unmoved by the cold, waiting with quiet patience.

Their wingspan is unreal, massive, deliberate, and powerful. Watching them soar high and low over the lake, talons ready to strike fish hidden beneath melting ice, is humbling. You feel small. And lucky.

I spent most of my time with a family of eagles, a mating pair among them. Bald eagles mate for life, forming strong bonds and returning to the same nests year after year. Their courtship is dramatic and poetic, cartwheeling through the sky, locked together in freefall. I witnessed pieces of that ritual through my lens, heart racing as I tracked them overhead.

They are devoted parents, sharing nesting and feeding duties. For hours, I followed their movements as they soared across the lake. The fog hanging low, the air brisk, the sky heavy with clouds. None of it slowed them down. Dinner was still found beneath the ice.

Every so often, their calls echoed across the water: sharp, staccato cries mixed with high whistles. Sounds that cut through the quiet like punctuation marks in a long, reflective sentence.

Bald eagles, our national bird, a living symbol of strength and endurance, reminding me that extraordinary beauty still lives right here, in the lower 48, waiting for those willing to slow down and look.

I’m already looking forward to the next adventure.

Just me.

My camera.

And the stories waiting to unfold through the lens.