{"id":1366,"date":"2011-02-08T19:36:58","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T02:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.wordpress.com\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2012-01-28T06:27:13","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T13:27:13","slug":"bald-eagle-eating-a-fish-in-mid-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/08\/bald-eagle-eating-a-fish-in-mid-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Bald Eagle Eating a Fish in Mid-air"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve often seen Bald Eagles carrying fish but never one actually consuming the meal while flying.\u00a0 Until yesterday, when I got some\u00a0photos of the behavior.\u00a0 Thanks to Mia for calling my attention to it or I may have missed the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eating<\/p>\n

Eating carp in flight<\/em><\/p>\n

At first I wondered if this eagle was only killing the carp with a lethal bite\u00a0as I have seen other raptors do in-flight,\u00a0but then I\u00a0remembered that it was already dead when it was picked up by the eagle.\u00a0 These fish were killed by refuge personnel (they use rotenone)\u00a0in order to prevent damage to the wetlands done by these invasive fish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"In-flight<\/p>\n

Falling fish scales<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The four photos in this sequence are in the order that they happened.\u00a0 Here you can see scales and debris falling from the carp as the eagles very sharp bill does its damage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of the head, including gill flap (operculum) being torn off\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect that the reason this eagle chose to consume at least part of its meal in flight has to do with competition.\u00a0 There weren’t many fish available and lots of hungry gulls and eagles to squabble over them.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Even gulls were at times very aggressive toward the eagles.\u00a0 On several occasions I observed gulls biting the tails of the eagles while both were in flight.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Actually<\/p>\n

Mid-flight sushi<\/em><\/p>\n

Here you can see that the eagle is actually consuming the carp rather than simply killing it.\u00a0 A very interesting behavior that I’d have been happy just to witness but was delighted that I got some nice shots of it.\u00a0 Another wonderful day in the field!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve often seen Bald Eagles carrying fish but never one actually consuming the meal while flying.\u00a0 Until yesterday, when I got some\u00a0photos of the behavior.\u00a0 Thanks to Mia for calling my attention to it or I may have missed the whole thing. \u00a0 Eating carp in flight At first I wondered if this eagle was only killing the carp with a lethal bite\u00a0as I have seen other raptors do in-flight,\u00a0but then I\u00a0remembered that it was already dead when it was picked up by the eagle.\u00a0 These fish were killed by refuge personnel (they use rotenone)\u00a0in order to prevent damage to the wetlands done by these invasive fish.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Falling fish scales \u00a0The four photos in this sequence are in the order that they happened.\u00a0 Here you can see scales and debris falling from the carp as the eagles very sharp bill does its damage. \u00a0 \u00a0 Part of the head, including gill flap (operculum) being torn off\u00a0 I suspect that the reason this eagle chose to consume at least part of its meal in flight has to do with competition.\u00a0 There weren’t many fish available and lots of hungry gulls and eagles to squabble over them.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Even gulls were at times very aggressive toward the eagles.\u00a0 On several occasions I observed gulls biting the tails of the eagles while both were in flight.\u00a0 Perhaps this eagle figured it had…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[355,392],"tags":[24,43,74,94,118,119,397,169,180,239,268],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-adult","tag-bald-eagle","tag-carp","tag-competition","tag-eating-fish-in-mid-air","tag-eating-fish-while-flying","tag-farmington-bay","tag-gulls","tag-ice","tag-operculum","tag-rotenone"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-m2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}