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1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n So to avoid the intense competition on the ice\u00a0this adult eagle tried a different strategy. It\u00a0plucked its fish out of the water, took off with it and then\u00a0began to eat it in flight. This wasn’t just an instinctive\u00a0“killing bite”\u00a0(administered to an already dead fish) –\u00a0the eagle\u00a0was actually consuming the carp. In some of my photos bits of flesh and scales were falling away. This was the first\u00a0bite and in my experience eagles often eat the eyes first, as this one is doing.<\/p>\n One of the reasons I like this image is because\u00a0the eagle’s\u00a0white head and the light fish are highlighted so well against the dark wing.<\/p>\n This\u00a0strategy to avoid competition didn’t work perfectly. It was effective on other eagles but not on the gulls who pestered this bird relentlessly in the air. There’s actually a hungry gull right behind this eagle (just out of frame) and I saw it bite the tail of the eagle at least once, though I missed those shots. Both the gull and the eagle can be seen in this previous post<\/a> if you’re interested and haven’t seen it before.<\/p>\n I have to give credit where credit’s due. I may have missed the entire sequence if Mia hadn’t told me this eagle was headed our way (I had other eagles in my viewfinder at the time). And as luck would have it her camera buffer filled up at just the wrong time so she missed the shots. I’ve always felt badly about that.<\/p>\n Although on the plus side I think I learned some new cuss words coming from the back seat of my pickup… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the reasons I like this image is because the eagle’s white head and the light fish are highlighted so well against the dark wing.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/bald-eagle-4376b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"bald-eagle-4376b-ron-dudley\\"")
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