My first serious association with these awesome birds came in 1985, when as the RSPB’s staff photographer I was privileged to be able to witness the maiden flight of the first young reared in Scotland for some 70 years. Photography at the secret nest location was certainly not an option at that time, with so much at stake, but I returned to the area during the following winter, full of optimism, and set up a hide and feeding station down by the shore. For ten cold days I watched and waited, photographing buzzards feasting on the rabbit carcasse bait as a consolation prize. Since my range was predetermined for a much larger subject, my 400mm Nikkor ED telephoto began to feel pretty inadequate, so after several days I was tempted to switch to a 1000mm mirror lens to improve the image size of the buzzards. Hard to believe now that I should have considered such an option with an f11 lens in that pre-Kodachrome 200 era, but it seemed the right decision at the time. So with my ISO 64 film and an unremembered but agonisingly slow shutter speed, I had to make the best of the circumstances when a juvenile sea eagle eventually landed between me and the bait. After all that effort the results were a bit of a disappointment to me, as the close-up portrait at near enough minimum focus could easily be mistaken for a bird photographed in captivity. It was indeed the surviving juvenile fledged earlier that year, and I had at least made a passable shot for the historical record, but I felt a bit cheated. Not at all what I had in mind! He didn’t stay down for more than a few moments, clearly uneasy about the hide, and after I’d taken a couple of frames he flew to a new perch beyond the bait before flying off for good. So all in all, I suppose I had about five minutes of photo opportunity for my ten days work. MORE