“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
see also
Eagle, Fishing
& Scenery Sections
Eagle Catch (@ t-1)
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