Eagle Collision
Bald Eagle’s hair raising experience
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“I was walking along the shore of Lake Tapps (Seattle, Washington) on Monday, and noticed a big commotion a little more than 1/4-mile away. I saw a Bald Eagle circling and repeatedly diving on what I thought must be a school of fish. Soon he was joined by another eagle and they began to fight each other for the prey. Territorial eagle fights do happen, but I’ve never seen one, nor have I seen any good photos. Naturally, I grabbed my camera. The action was so furious and far away that it was hard to see if I was getting any good photos. So I just snapped lots pics and hoped for the best. I didn’t quite realize what I was watching, until I got home and looked at the pics on my computer. It turned out I had photographed a three-way life & death struggle between two mature Bald Eagles fighting over one very frightened duck! The eagles fought each other for several minutes while trying to get that duck - it was like WW II in the air! The fellow sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck never realized the show he was missing...  The duck watches as the eagle speeds straight at him at 40 mph...  With perfect timing, the duck dove and escaped with a mighty splash - then he’d pop to the surface as soon as the eagle flew past. This was repeated over and over for several minutes. Would the poor duck tire and that would be the end of him?  A second eagle joins the attack! The duck kept diving “just in time”, so the eagles began to dive into the water after him...  After several minutes the eagles got frustrated and began to attack each other. They soon began to dive vertically, level out, and attack head-on in a good old- fashioned game of high-speed “Chicken”. Sometimes they banked away from each other at the last possible second; other times they’d climb vertically and tear into each other while falling back toward the water. (The duck catches his breath at the right side of this picture)...  Terrible miscalculation - a head-on collision between two Bald Eagles...  One eagle stayed aloft and flew away, but the other lies motionless in a crumpled heap. The lucky duck survived to live another day...  The eagle wiggled, flapped and struggled - mostly underwater. He finally got his head above water and with great difficulty managed to get airborne. To my astonishment, he flew straight toward me, and it was the most wretched and unstable bird flight I’ve ever seen!  The bedraggled eagle circled me once - then lit atop a nearby fir tree. He had a six-foot wingspread and looked mighty angry. I was concerned that I might be his next target, but he was so exhausted he just stared at me. Then I wondered if he would topple to the ground...   My half-hour wait was rewarded with this marvelous sight. He flew away, almost good as new. All these pics were taken over 1/4-mile away, with a hand-held Panasonic FZ-28 at 18X zoom (486mm), on Intelligent Automatic (point-and-shoot). Photographer Unknown Bird House: Home Tweet Home. - Daffynitions joe-ks.com A married man is a caged bird. - Spanish Proverb Unflappable: A flightless bird - Daffynitions joe-ks.com The early bird catches the worm. - English Proverb Crowbar: Where birds can get a drink. - Daffynitions joe-ks.com A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. - English Proverb The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs. - Tanyas The shell must break before the bird can fly. - Unknown I will be the Thai equivalent of Eddie the Eagle. - Vanessa Mae No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. - William Blake Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. - Salvador Dali You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren. - William Henry Hudson The early bird gets the worm. The early worm gets eaten. - Norman Augustine The bird who dares to fall is the bird who learns to fly. - Unknown Egg: 1. A day's work for a hen; 2. A bird's hometown. - Daffynitions joe-ks.com The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame. - Kohta Hirano If one cannot catch the bird of paradise, better take a wet hen. - Nikita Krushchev In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm. - Alan Perlis Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come. - Chinese Proverb Though what bird in the best of circumstances does not look a little stricken? - Lorrie Moore With birds flying around, man's desire for having wings rises to infinite. - Mehmet M Ildan I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars... the rest I squandered. - George Best A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song. - Lou Holtz It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up. - Muhammad Ali Birds find shelter during the rain, but eagles avoid rain by flying above the clouds. - Abdul Kalam Football isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport. - Vince Lombardi You can't fly with the owls by night and expect to keep up with the eagles during the day. - Unknown A bird that you set free may be caught again, but a word that escapes your lips will not return. - Jewish Proverb If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth. - William Maxwell We could not understand that there was anything about a bird that could not be built on a larger scale. - Orville Wright Mosquito: 1. A small insect designed by God to make us think better of flies; 2. The state bird of New Jersey. - Daffynitions joe-ks.com Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out. - Ogden Nash Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses. - Dale Carnegie Success is full of promise till a man gets it; and then it is a last year's nest from which the birds have flown. - Henry Ward Beecher A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. - James Dent You are Mr. Owl. I am Ms. Hummingbird. We may come from different species but as long as you're a bird, I'm a bird too. - Glad Munaiseche You can not prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair. - Chinese Proverb There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. - Robert Lynd Like a prisoner awaiting his release, like a schoolboy when the end of term is near, like a migrant bird ready to fly south... I long to be gone. - Malcolm Muggeridge see also Eagle, Fishing & Scenery Sections B.C. Christmas Tree Eagle Catch (@ t-1)
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