2009: Behaviour: Birds - Winner
Rob Palmer (United States of America)
Opportunist snatch
In January 2009, something strange happened at a cattle feedlot in Colorado. Rob noticed a group of bald eagles sitting in a large tree nearby. Usually, bald eagles hunt near water. Usually, they eat fish - but they are also opportunists. These ones had gathered to feed on starlings and red-winged blackbirds and would launch themselves out of the trees and chase the small birds up into the sky. In this case, the eagle (an immature) was successful, but often the small birds would out-fly their attackers. What was strange was the way some of the small birds would suddenly fly up in an erratic way, making themselves easy targets. What Rob suspects is that the cattle feed may have been treated with an avicide (a bird poison) that affected the birds' nervous systems. But after two weeks, the odd behaviour of the small birds stopped, and within a few days, the bald eagles left.
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III + Canon 500mm f4 IS USM lens; 1/3200 sec at f5; ISO 400.
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