Chris Thayer's walking eagle studios

11/18/2022

Why are we hoping to raise $150,000 today? One big resson is because we built our very own veterinary center this past year! It is INCREDIBLE to be able to provide our animals with high standard of care in our own building! With that came a large investment. An investment in our organization and our animals!

This beautiful momma is Orla! She has been uncomfortable all day and is headed into c-section right now. This photo was 1 min ago as she is being prepared for her surgery. Our team of staff and volunteers are ready to help momma Orla and her beautiful puppies who should be making an appearance soon....

Stay tuned!

09/30/2021

https://youtu.be/0CML-S-Gvtk

08/27/2021

In honor of the lives lost today.

08/23/2021

I’m asked “how close to these animals are you?” So I created this iPhone video last night. The video and the photo.

08/11/2021

The Golden Hour. Whitetail deer are ruminant (cud-chewing) animals with four chambered stomachs. When deer feed, they tongue food to the back of their mouths and chew just enough to swallow. After chewing its cud a while, the deer reswallows the food and it passes in to the second portion of the stomach. You can see that Junior is ready to go to dinner, while Mom is making room for hers.

08/10/2021

During the rut fighting is necessary to establish rank and territory, and to defend breeding rights, but it's not always pretty. Dominant bucks typically exhibit battle scars, and this mature buck that I photographed last evening has lost an eye. At some point in his life his eye was lost, yet he lives on.

08/08/2021

Here’s an informative video about photographing Whitetail Deer. It’s really a great video that shows the “How To.” It doesn’t go into camera settings etc. it’s more about the experience.

Shenandoah National Park VA, Wild Photo AdventuresTag along with host Doug Gardner on the exciting adventure as he teaches you how to photograph white-tailed...

08/07/2021

The Dance. It begins by seeing a brown horizontal shape. I recognize that it’s a deer, and peering into the brush I see antlers. I need to position myself farther to my right to see it’s head. The deer moves, I move…He shows his head as he’s on alert, and is crouching in the tall grass looking at me. I froze in place. He slowly grazed on the foliage until he finally stepped into daylight. Allowing me to get some well lighted photos.

07/24/2021

Dusk last night. It was much darker under the canopy of leave than the photos depict. Using a tripod or anything to brace the camera on allows you to slow your shutter speed down and let in more light.

07/20/2021

DID YOU KNOW: Hummingbirds are extremely territorial (as displayed in the photo) and will use its beak to stab other hummingbirds. A hummingbird's brain makes up a whopping 4.2 percent of its weight; proportionally, that's the largest of any bird's. ... They can even recognize humans, and know which ones can be counted on to refill empty hummingbird feeders. Compare that to the human brain being 2 percent of its proportional weight.
Studies have shown that hummingbirds can remember every flower they’ve ever visited, including on migration routes. They can figure out how long to wait between visits so the flowers have time to generate more nectar.
No other bird on Earth can stunt-fly like a hummingbird. They can fly forward or backward, hover, and even fly upside-down, and they do all of this so fast we can’t even see it—beating their wings between 70 and 200 times per second. This power, precision, and agility allows them to reach speeds of up to 30 miles per hour while flying and 60 miles per hour while diving. Their mad flight skills have made them a subject of great scientific fascination and several weird experiments.
A ll this action comes at a cost. Like marathon runners or teenagers, hummingbirds have super-fast metabolisms and need to eat constantly—about every 10 minutes. Estimates vary, but it’s believed that they generally eat two to three times their own body weight in bugs and nectar every day.