{"id":36205,"date":"2015-12-29T05:42:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T12:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=36205"},"modified":"2015-12-29T05:57:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T12:57:27","slug":"a-clumsy-bald-eagle-with-and-then-without-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/29\/a-clumsy-bald-eagle-with-and-then-without-prey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Clumsy Bald Eagle With (and then without) Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The occasional Bald Eagle lurks near the west end of the Antelope Island causeway for good reason – lots of potential prey. The open water near the bridge attracts a variety of waterfowl so falcons and eagles are\u00a0sometimes seen in the area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Five days ago (Christmas Eve Day) we\u00a0found this adult Bald Eagle with prey atop one of the poles in the marina as we were leaving the island. I suspect the prey to be an Eared Grebe though I’m not sure of that. The eagle seemed just a little nervous, possibly because of traffic coming on to the island from the causeway and it didn’t take long for it to…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

take off with its prize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The eagle was quite a distance from me but I often fire off a burst in these situations just in case I notice something interesting when I inspect the images more closely later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was also hoping it would fly toward me with its prey…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

but instead\u00a0it chose to head north in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point it seemed to inspect its prey in flight, almost as if it was checking out its grip on the grebe.\u00a0Soon after\u00a0this shot I\u00a0stopped pressing my shutter button because the eagle was mostly\u00a0facing away from me and quickly becoming\u00a0quite small\u00a0in my viewfinder.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bald<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But suddenly, when I was just about ready to put my camera down, the eagle dropped its prey.<\/p>\n

I have no idea if the grebe was dropped accidentally or on purpose, though I suspect the\u00a0former because the eagle swooped down and apparently retrieved it.\u00a0I couldn’t actually see that happen though because the grebe was dropped near the shore where I couldn’t see it.<\/p>\n

This prey item looked to be in pretty tough shape so it’s possible that it was scavenged or stolen from another raptor. In the past I’ve witnessed Bald Eagles stealing prey from falcons in this same area.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The occasional Bald Eagle lurks near the west end of the Antelope Island causeway for good reason – lots of potential prey. The open water near the bridge attracts a variety of waterfowl so falcons and eagles are sometimes seen in the area.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":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":[3,355,334],"tags":[31,43,117,146,400,256],"class_list":["post-36205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bald-eagles","category-birds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bald-eagle","tag-eared-grebe","tag-flight","tag-haliaeetus-leucocephalus","tag-prey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9pX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36205","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=36205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}