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<\/p>\nAmongst Bald Eagles tensions often rise over food. But whether or not a fight will actually break out can be very difficult to predict.<\/p>\n
Some years ago I photographed Bald Eagles battling over food at Farmington Bay WMA. The birds were far away and there was moisture in the air that degraded image quality but I think the photos below document the behavior well enough.<\/p>\n
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When I first got the eagles in my viewfinder the brawl was already in progress and may have been for some time. It involved a first winter juvenile (the one hunkered down with food which I believe was a duck), a near-adult challenging the juvenile in this photo, a subadult to the right and at the right edge of the frame we see the head of a full adult watching the brouhaha as it developed.<\/p>\n
I was happy to get eagles of so many ages and plumages in the same photos.<\/p>\n
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Four frames later the near-adult was becoming more serious about its challenge to the juvenile and the subadult was coming in to join the fray. All three of them went at it for quite a while but mostly they had their backs to me and just looked like a jumble of feathers.<\/p>\n
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Twenty frames after the previous photo the juvenile was still holding its own but the subadult had taken an ass-over-teakettle nose dive into the ground. The raven in the photo had been hanging around the outskirts of the eagle dust-up the entire time and decided to photobomb this shot.<\/p>\n
Not long after this I left the eagles because they were so far away and drove down the road to look for other birds. At that point most of the excitement looked like it was over.<\/p>\n
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But at other times with Bald Eagles I fully expect a fight to break out when it doesn’t. Following is an example.<\/p>\n
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Here we have a full adult and a juvenile facing each other down. The source of their tension is what’s left of a fish in the adult’s talons – the adult had it and the juvenile wanted it.<\/p>\n
Guaranteed fight, especially at these very close quarters, right?<\/p>\n
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Nope, didn’t happen. The adult eventually continued feeding and even allowed the younger bird to snatch a piece of the fish without going ballistic. Surprised the hell out of me, that’s for sure. There’s a variety of possible explanations for the adult’s equanimity but it seems fruitless to speculate at this late date.<\/p>\n
Birds, just when you think you’ve got them figured out they throw in the monkey wrench.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amongst Bald Eagles tensions often rise over food. But whether or not a fight will actually break out can be very difficult to predict.<\/p>\n