“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 A married man is a caged bird. - Spanish Proverb Birds of a feather flock together. - English Proverb The freedom of birds is an insult to me. - Cormac McCarthy A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. - English Proverb The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs. - Tanyas Heavenly bodies are nests of invisible birds. - Dejan Stojanovic Was there a bird for the souls of people like me? - Ruta Sepetys The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. - William Blake 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 old age of an eagle is better than the youth of a sparrow. - Proverb The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame. - Kohta Hirano A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing. - Bret Harte Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come. - Chinese Proverb If the Eagle Scouts had some sort of Sith equivalent, Marcone was it. - Jim Butcher 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 Birds with broken wings walking on the ground were once flying high up in the sky. - Mehmet M Ildan It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up. - Muhammad Ali Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. - Lanston Hughes Football isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport. - Vince Lombardi Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind. Listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody. - Eubie Blake Love is not only the story of butterflies or birds; it is also the story of jackals and hounds. - M.F. Moonzajer I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. - e e cummings We could not understand that there was anything about a bird that could not be built on a larger scale. - Orville Wright What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife. - Rodney Dangerfield I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. - Franklin D Roosevelt I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky. - Mark Nepo 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 The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings. - J.M. Barrie 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 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 It's a good thing we have gravity or else when birds died they'd just stay right up there. Hunters would be all confused. - Steven Wright The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. - Eric Berne If I were a flower, humming bird would be my favourite bee And If I were blind, the light of darkness I'd love to see - Munia Khan The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our destruction. - Aesop 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 Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. - Victor Hugo see also Eagle, Fishing & Scenery Sections B.C. Christmas Tree Eagle Catch (@ t-1) |
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