{"id":69650,"date":"2019-02-28T05:59:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T12:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=69650"},"modified":"2019-02-28T06:18:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T13:18:28","slug":"fighting-male-long-billed-curlews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/28\/fighting-male-long-billed-curlews\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Male Long-billed Curlews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I rerun a favorite older post because few current readers have seen it. This one was originally published on April 17, 2012. For this version I’ve rewritten much of the text, cleaned up the formatting and changed the title.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I had been photographing a mated pair of Long-billed Curlews on Antelope Island and as usual for me I was using my 500 f\/4 lens with attached 1.4 tc. Suddenly a second male unexpectedly flew in to challenge the original male and immediately all hell broke loose. The action was incredibly quick with wings, legs, long bills and tails flailing in every direction so of course I was too close to the birds with my lens and tc combination to prevent clipping body parts in most of my images of the fight.<\/p>\n

I remember thinking I should take off the tc but I was afraid that by the time I had accomplished it the action would be over. That was a mistake – the fight lasted for several minutes and I had plenty of time to switch.<\/p>\n

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There were no preliminaries, the battle began immediately after the second male touched down.<\/p>\n

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They used their incredibly long bills for biting, stabbing and pulling feathers.<\/p>\n

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Here they briefly broke apart and appeared to be sizing each other up.<\/p>\n

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But in an instant they were going at it again.<\/p>\n

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In my experience many birds, particularly wading and shorebirds with long bills, seem to instinctively go for the eye of their opponent in a fight. This time the eye was missed but it was a close call.<\/p>\n

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Wings were also used as weapons and some of their wing strikes were vicious, sometimes knocking the other bird off its feet. This time the wing went harmlessly over the back of the bird on the right.<\/p>\n

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I love the fighting posture of the bird on the left. It reminds me the opening defensive position of human fencing competitors.<\/p>\n

En Garde!<\/p>\n

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For a second or two they stood like this in threatening poses…<\/p>\n

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Then they moved a few feet to a more grassy fighting arena but eventually the bird on the left threw in the towel and flew off.<\/p>\n

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However the “winning” bird paid a price. Its eye had apparently been injured during the battle and as soon as the vanquished bird left the area this curlew immediately perched on a buffalo chip for several minutes, keeping its right eye closed most of the time it was there. Eventually it wandered off and by then the eye seemed to have partially recovered.<\/p>\n

I would have preferred to have had my teleconverter off so I wouldn’t have clipped or cut off so many wings and body parts. The upside to that “mistake” was a more intimate look at the combatants during the fracas.<\/p>\n

Tradeoffs.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes: <\/em><\/p>\n