Birds

Heavy-weight aerial combat

May 29, 2014 by Dragan No Comments

The forecast said „rain all day“ and with a mug of coffee in the morning, seeing a bright blue sky through the window I was thinking some not so nice thoughts about meteorologists and their trustworthiness. Sharing our thoughts at Facebook and looking for a place to go now, without a prior plan and early start, the four of us ended up at the nearby Veliko Blato fish farm, swallowed by the city’s recent spread.

Soon, an immature White-tailed (Sea) Eagle was above us, with a smallish carp in its talons (click on the photo to enlarge it).

Keen on a free meal, gulls started the chase.

Attracted by all the commotion, one adult White-tailed Eagle joins the chase and after several impressive maneuvers (the “wow” factor included), young eagle drops the fish.

Now, it is after the old eagle to grab it… and this is the heavy-weight eagle champ of Europe. It goes after the falling fish…

…almost…

…but no, the older eagle misses the fish, which falls to the ground, to make some stray cat a very happy cat.

Photos (c) Slobodan Panjkovic

Written by Dragan

Dragan Simic is obsessively passionate about two things – birding and travelling in search of birds, and that has taken him from his native Balkans to the far shores of Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa, India and Latin America. His 10,000 Birds blog posts were Highly Commended in the International Category of the 2015 BBC Wildlife Blogger Awards. Birder by passion and environmental scientist by education, he is an ecotourism consultant, a field researcher and a bird blogger who always thinks that birding must be better behind that next bend in the road, and that the best bird ever is – the next lifer. He tweets as @albicilla66