July 29th  to 31st 2005 

There is a place in Scotland where white tailed eagles can be photographed by throwing fish from a boat and they swoop in snatching the bait a few metres from the photographer. A number of people have been successful here and many will be familiar with their pictures. 

Personally I have not been lucky. 15 days of waiting in rain, storms and leaden grey skies has been my lot. Only once did I step foot in the boat on a fine sunny day, but I still got nothing as the boatman could not catch any fish. The eagle circled overhead waiting its snack as we fished for a fruitless two hours. The following day we were back to rain and I came home. 

There is an easier way. For several years now the Norway coast has been the place to photograph these birds. I suspect that on the whole Norway has better weather than western Scotland, or maybe I am just unlucky in Scotland. There are certainly more eagles. Ole Martin Dahle, the boatman who runs the trips has yet to fail to catch the required fish, but he does expect the photographers to lend a hand. 

I was already in Norway in my campervan, but met up there with Dickie Duckett and Paul Hobson to share the cost of the boat, which is not cheap. In fact nothing is cheap in Norway. Dickie and Paul were keen on fishing so between them and Ole the fish bucket was constantly refreshed. 

Ole has trained up several pairs of eagles in different fjords so during the course of the day there are likely to be several eagle dives. The most we had was 14 in one day. Ole takes you out from 0600 to about 1100 hours and again from 1700 to about 2200 hours. When the open boat is moving it gets very cold so several layers of clothes and woolly hats are needed.  Waterproofs too in case of rain.

I attached a 300mm f4 lens on one body complete with a 1.4 extender and the 100-400mm zoom on the other. The autofocus is not as fast on the zoom, but if the bird came too close it was vital.

We did three days on the boat.  Paul and Dickie stayed in the only hotel in town, which was again costly. Although I booked the boat directly it is much cheaper to book through the British company Wildshots, who have a long term relationship with Ole and obviously get a big discount. Their price includes accommodation, transport from the airport and meals. See their web site for details.

Other species likely to be photographed are great black backed, herring and common gulls all in flight behind the boat. We were also lucky to get lesser black backed gull, kittiwake and arctic skua. The real bonus was an otter chasing a red fox along the shore. That was very special and the fox turned out to be very tame allowing great pictures.