Mike's Photographs : Conowingo Dam, Bald Eagles and Carpal Tunnel

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Conowingo Dam, Bald Eagles and Carpal Tunnel

I don’t think I’ve gone barking mad but getting up at 2:30AM, driving 1 1/2 hours in the -5.5C temperatures and standing around on freezing concrete for several hours some might think differently. In my defense against such accusations I must add that I was not alone, there must have been at least a 1000 other equally demented alongside me. So all that being said WTF has Conowingo Dam, Bald Eagles 🦅 got to do with Carpal Tunnel. I’ll explain in a bit.

Arriving at 5AM in the car park below the mile wide Conowingo Dam on the lower Susquehanna River well before the 7:07AM sunrise I found several others perhaps in worse mental state than myself had already arrived.

What was the attraction you might ask. Bald Eagles. Perhaps 90-100 of them all congregating below the Hydro Electric generating station to feast on the fish stunned or killed by the turbines. Why the ridiculous hour? That was to make sure I got a space in the rapidly filling car park. In the dawn ‘Golden Hour’ the Eagle activity as well as the sound of camera shutters from the photographers lining the river started. Fishing activity was very hectic at times or none existent. The station was generating from the furthest turbines so the feeding was further away than I’ve seen in the past so not many close eagles.

Around midday I got a warning from my camera saying “Full”. I had filled both a 256GB and a 128GB memory card. Leaving the car park the decision to arrive before the first sparrows fart proved rational as there were cars parked up the entrance road hill for half a mile.

As for carpal tunnel, at home I found I had nearly 7000 images on the 2 memory cards. Chosing which ones to actually download, sort through and finally process a few of the few aggravated my carpal tunnel on my mouse wrist. Carpal Tunnel be damned, I'm going back again.

Enough words, here’s a few pictures.