{"id":34879,"date":"2015-10-26T06:51:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T12:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=34879"},"modified":"2015-10-26T07:09:33","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T13:09:33","slug":"several-birds-of-two-species-battling-over-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/several-birds-of-two-species-battling-over-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Several Birds Of Two Species Battling Over A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

This fish must have been an epicurean delight because there sure\u00a0were a lot of birds fighting over it for a long time.<\/p>\n

Most\u00a0of these\u00a0images are of mediocre quality but they’re good enough to tell the story and I think it’s an interesting one.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

About a month ago I was mostly photographing other birds at Farmington when all hell broke out among a small group of Snowy Egrets on the other side of the pond. One of them had caught this fish and several other egrets tried to steal it from its rightful owner. The skirmish over the fish lasted for almost four minutes which is quite unusual and I have a theory as to why it lasted so long.<\/p>\n

The fish is a Weather Loach, an invasive species common at Farmington but not found in most other habitats where Snowy Egrets fish during migration. These loaches have\u00a0a long\u00a0eel-like body and they’re very “squirmy” so when they’re caught they typically wrap their bodies around the bill of\u00a0the\u00a0bird just like a snake might do. Presumably these egrets were migrating through and I suspect this bird may not have had any previous experience with loaches\u00a0because this one seemed to be nonplussed by the situation it found itself in.\u00a0 It struggled with the fish for a long time, seeming confused, and all the time other egrets were trying to take it away.<\/p>\n

It was a chaotic scene with many potential photographic opportunities but because of the strong sidelight and issues with multiple birds and depth of field most of my images were only deserving of the delete bin so that’s where they ended up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point the egret actually dropped the fish but quickly retrieved it before…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

yet another bird moved in to try to take it away. Here we see only the shadow of the bird with the fish on the right side of the frame.<\/p>\n

The skirmish went on for another several minutes and in that time I took 118 more shots and deleted them all. But then the bird with the fish took off to escape its tormentors…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

and flew low and around a clump of cattails and then came back in my direction but by that time it had picked up yet another hungry tormentor with thievery on its mind – this time a gull. There’s nothing sharp in this image but I thought I’d include it to set up the\u00a0following photo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The gull actually bit the trailing feet of the egret in flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy<\/p>\n

A huge crop of the same image shows that I snapped the shutter just a millisecond before the bite but I actually saw the bite and the egret react to it through my lens. I assume the gull’s intention was to cause the egret to drop the fish but it didn’t. At this point I must have been distracted by other birds because I don’t know how this turned out.<\/p>\n

But after all that work I hope the egret was eventually able to enjoy its meal.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

This fish must have been an epicurean delight because there sure were a lot of birds fighting over it for a long time.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34880,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,394,375],"tags":[2720,1008,140,141,185,1430,287,320],"class_list":["post-34879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-snowy-egrets","tag-egretta","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-fighting","tag-fish","tag-invasive-species","tag-kleptoparasitism","tag-snowy-egret","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/snowy-egret-5032-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-94z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34879","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}