Ed Donnelly has been a fixture in Damariscotta Mills the past two springs. The disabled veteran has remained at his post on the bridge since early May, taking pictures of osprey and eagles feasting on alewives.
Long after professional photographers have come and gone, Donnelly remains, hoping to get another great shot with his long zoom lens.
An Air Force veteran, Donnelly flew air cargo planes for 21 years. He started flying C 130s, and then C 141s, C27s, and finished with C17s. He flew transport planes all over the world, and was stationed in Germany and in Panama, as well as state side.
He was medically retired after losing a leg in a motor vehicle accident. “I loved every minute of my military career,” he said.
After his accident and a couple of years in a hospital, Donnelly started his second career with the Veterans Affairs, working on disability claims for the next 15 years. “I am double retired now,” Donnelly said.
He adopted a couple of kittens and started taking pictures of them. After taking “several hundred” pictures of his cats, he gravitated toward more challenging nature photography. Donnelly moved to Newcastle in May of 2020, and caught the end of the alewife run. He was hooked after that.
He calls his photography a hobby. “I took plenty of pictures in the Air Force in the old film camera days,” he said.
He has a knack for capturing birds in flight, diving, and fighting. He loves the action the fish ladder at Damariscotta Mills offers him. He spends a couple of hours almost every day in May and June photographing birds in the Mills. He stops there a couple of days a week during the rest of the summer.
He has two camera setups, a Sony Alfa 1, and an Olympus OM-1. He uses a 200-600 ml zoom lens.
“Birds, especially raptors have always fascinated me,” he said. “I do shoot backyard birds as well.”
He has had pictures published in an Audubon calendar, and has donated pictures for corporate calendars.
All his pictures are on a flicker page called LennyCarl08. He has over 25,000 images on his flicker account, but he said does not have a favorite picture.
“It is hard to say,” he said. “Really good osprey and eagle stuff; an osprey coming out of the water with an alewife; an osprey diving with the tip of its talons hitting the water. I have a couple of eagles fighting, a couple of osprey fighting, and osprey and eagles fighting.
Donnelly shoots in the cold and the heat, but not the rain. “Cameras are too expensive to get wet,” he said.
Donnelly said he enjoys people stopping by to ask questions. They stop to ask what he is looking for, if he needs help, or for directions.
Although parked in his wheelchair in the middle of the bridge, Donnelly does not fear traffic. “You have to watch out for dropping fish,” he said. “The seagulls drop them in the middle of the road.”
Although the alewife run is over, raptors are still present to capture fish heading back out to sea, dead fish, or stragglers. Of floating fish, Donnelly said, “Eagles just pounce on them. Osprey will not go for the dead fish, but the eagles love them. Eagles will eat anything.”
“It is absolutely fun,” Donnelly said of shooting pictures and chatting with bird watchers, other photographers, and Mills residents.
