Bald Eagle Eating a Fish in Mid-air

I’ve often seen Bald Eagles carrying fish but never one actually consuming the meal while flying.  Until yesterday, when I got some photos of the behavior.  Thanks to Mia for calling my attention to it or I may have missed the whole thing.

 

Eating carp in flight

At first I wondered if this eagle was only killing the carp with a lethal bite as I have seen other raptors do in-flight, but then I remembered that it was already dead when it was picked up by the eagle.  These fish were killed by refuge personnel (they use rotenone) in order to prevent damage to the wetlands done by these invasive fish. 

 

 

Falling fish scales

 The four photos in this sequence are in the order that they happened.  Here you can see scales and debris falling from the carp as the eagles very sharp bill does its damage.

 

 

Part of the head, including gill flap (operculum) being torn off 

I suspect that the reason this eagle chose to consume at least part of its meal in flight has to do with competition.  There weren’t many fish available and lots of hungry gulls and eagles to squabble over them.  If an eagle tried to eat a fish on the ice (the ponds were mostly frozen) other birds would usually challenge them for the meal.  Even gulls were at times very aggressive toward the eagles.  On several occasions I observed gulls biting the tails of the eagles while both were in flight.  Perhaps this eagle figured it had a better chance of getting some of the fish in its stomach while flying than it did down there on the ice. 

 

 

Mid-flight sushi

Here you can see that the eagle is actually consuming the carp rather than simply killing it.  A very interesting behavior that I’d have been happy just to witness but was delighted that I got some nice shots of it.  Another wonderful day in the field! 

 

Ron