joe-ks.com
Eagle Collision
Bald Eagle's hair raising experience
“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
