We had the good fortune yesterday to get within 25 ft. of a young, beautiful and apparently healthy Bald Eagle while going for a walk along the Cowichan River Estuary Trail. The Bald Eagle was sitting in a fir tree, only 25 ft. above us, right at the extreme end of the trail where the Cowichan River flowed into the bay.
This is the closest either Paulette or I have been to a Bald Eagle
It was kind of amazing as our presence, including Molly and Rylie, didn’t seem to faze the Eagle one bit. At one point Rylie started barking at a log in the water (bad log!) and even then the Eagle didn’t flinch. We were able to walk right to the base of the tree, point the camera up, and snap away.
The Eagle seemed to be looking directly at us unconcerned
Paulette and I couldn’t believe it. We must have spent a good 30 minutes taking photos and just watching this majestic bird. At one point Paulette even tried talking to the bird (how do you talk to an Eagle?) and it looked directly at the both of us but still just moved its head and wings a touch but seemed completely unperturbed.
When we first arrived at the Estuary, a group was just leaving and told us about the “Bald Eagle in the tree down at the end of the trail”. Of course, we figured it was just our luck to have missed it never thinking there was any chance the Eagle would still be there by the time we walked the one mile to the trail’s end.
Our first view of the Bald Eagle from a few hundred yards
But, as we turned the last bend on the pathway, we looked up and sure enough, there was the Bald Eagle still calmly sitting in the tree just a few hundred yards away. I took the above telephoto shot thinking for sure it would fly away as we got closer but it just stayed in the tree calm as could be. It was our lucky day!
Molly and Rylie meeting up with friends on the trail
Just entering the Estuary Trail, we met a group of hikers with 5 or 6 small dogs so that got things off to a good start for Molly and Rylie. These were the folks who told us about the Eagle down by the water. It was sure a nice way to spend another sunny afternoon. I think we have one more coming before the rains are forecast to return.
Not long after we got home from the Estuary I received an email from Elaine (E & R Travels) asking about a photo problem she was having with her blog.
Google was telling Elaine she had used up her 1GB allotment of free storage and would not be able to post more photos unless she paid for more GB’s.
Right away, I thought this was odd because Elaine is a member of Google+ and that comes with unlimited photo storage for all photos less than 2048 pixels at the widest measurement. I also knew that Google crunches down the size of photos uploaded at more than 2048 pixels to the 2048 maximum. So, what gives?
The nasty message from Google
A bit of checking revealed a little ‘catch-22’ that may be of help to others who happen to run across this problem. A lot of folks want to post photos larger than 2048 pixels in width just to maintain the original resolution so they can produce large prints. I emailed Elaine back and asked her what size photos she was uploading. It turns out Elaine was loading her photos direct from her camera at 4320x3240.
This is what Google Storage costs without a Google+ membership
Somehow, the GoogleMeister keeps track of these oversized photos and after you’ve uploaded 1GB of these they will no longer resize them automatically and therefore you are check-mated. This was news to me and the explanations for this were anything but crystal clear but that is in fact what was happening with Elaine’s photos.
Free photo storage is reason enough for most to join Google+
A mere human cannot argue with the Google Gods, so the solution for Elaine was to simply re-size all future blog photos to less than 2048px (i.e. 1600 x 1200) and that would ensure that she would get unlimited photo storage on G+. Happy to say that worked and Elaine is now able to post photos to her blog again.
Have a great Tuesday, and thanks again for visiting!
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