If you’re not a morning person, and I’m not, nature photography can be ‘challenging’ at times.  In order to get those sunrise and early light photographs, well, you have to get up before the sun does. When the place you are headed to is 125 miles away, you’ve got to get up really early to beat the sun.  The alarm went off at 3:00AM this morning and I was off to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, MD where I shared the sunrise with an Osprey.

That early morning light did look nice on this tree.  Blackwater NWR is a great place to watch eagles, osprey and hawks along with other birds that are migrating through the area.  Today, there were White Pelicans.  It’s a great place to practice BIF (bird in flight) photography and it takes a lot of practice.

Blackwater is also a good place to see birds just hanging out in the trees, like the immature Bald Eagle below.  The refuge has an eagle cam watching over a nest with two young eagles.  You can check it out at this link. We are fortunate to have a good population of Bald Eagles in the Mid-Atlantic states and a lot of places to easily observe them.