The winter of 2011 at Farmington Bay was a madhouse of Bald Eagles and gulls competing over the invasive carp killed by refuge personnel in an effort to control their destructive tendencies. Even\u00a0Northern Harriers joined in the fray and were eating fish.\u00a0The\u00a0dead carp concentrated in small areas of open water (most of the refuge was frozen) so that’s where the scavenging eagles and gulls were found in large numbers.<\/p>\n
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1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n When an eagle claimed a fish on the ice the competition for it was often fierce. Fights regularly broke out between eagles over food and the gulls were constantly pestering eagles for their\u00a0carp so this one tried a different tack – it took off from the ice and began to eat its fish in flight. As is common with eagles it first went for the eyeball.<\/p>\n I don’t know why Bald Eagles often go for the eye first but it’s something I’ve seen more than once. I’ve read\u00a0that Golden Eagles often do the same with their mammalian prey. I don’t see how it can be because the\u00a0eye is particularly delectable or nutritious because the fluid\u00a0(vitreous humor) that makes up most of its volume is about 98% water. Perhaps it’s an instinctive behavior that prevents the “victim” from seeing so its struggles to get away\u00a0might be less effective but that’s only a wild guess. I don’t believe that this bite was an attempt to kill the fish because it had already\u00a0been dead for days. If anyone has some insight into\u00a0this behavior I’d love to be enlightened. <\/em><\/p>\n Ok, back to the story…\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n This eagle was a skilled multitasker. It was trying to fly with the extra weight and inconvenience of the fish at the same time it was digging out that eyeball and attempting to avoid other birds in the air, some of whom were after its fish. Here you can see several scales and other debris falling away from the carp.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n As it attempted to remove the eye the head of the fish was wobbling around which made the task even more difficult so the eagle unclamped its\u00a0claws from just above the tail of the carp and moved its right foot closer to the head for more stability. This gave me a good look at those\u00a0formidable talons.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n As you can probably tell from its\u00a0posture the eagle wasn’t flying very fast while it was attempting to do so many things at the same time. That relatively slow flight gave me a great opportunity to fire off several bursts with sharp focus on the action. I remember trying to ration my shots so the buffer of my Canon 7D didn’t fill up so I’m sure I missed some interesting shots that I’d have been able to get using my present 7D Mark II with its faster burst rate and larger buffer. Oh well, I’m not complaining, really I’m not.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n A different crop of the previous image reveals why the eagle felt\u00a0some urgency to consume the fish. The gulls were absolutely relentless in their\u00a0efforts to cause an eagle in flight to drop its fish.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n Twice on this morning I actually saw a gull bite the tail of an eagle in flight and\u00a0one time\u00a0the gull held on to the\u00a0tail for a second or more. I don’t recall if this gull bit the eagle’s tail or not but it looks to me like it was thinking about it.<\/p>\n I was very lucky with this sequence for many reasons, among them the fact that on this morning the light angle was far from ideal so if there’d been bright sky in the background the action would have been backlit and\u00a0image quality compromised. But the eagle was low enough that I got the nearby dark\u00a0Wasatch Mountains in the background and that made a huge, positive\u00a0difference.<\/p>\n Our forecast calls for intermittent snow and mostly overcast skies for the foreseeable future so I may not be posting many new images for a while. Thankfully I have extensive archives to fall back on but I’ll try not to overdo the older images…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n PS – There’s another reason I’m glad I went back to look at these images. In doing so I realized that I had only four shots of the\u00a0series in my photo organizer (the four in the original post) but I knew I’d taken more than that. In searching for the missing images I was able to find 15 more of them. Not all of them\u00a0are great images but I’m glad to have them if for no other reason than to help fill in the background of the event.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Because this adult Bald Eagle was under duress it was eating the carp in flight.<\/p>\n![\"bald](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bald-eagle-4375-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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