Eagle snatches fox holding rabbit in mouth in dramatic images

The Franklin-Turkey story is mostly myth. It’s also mostly based on misconceptions and misunderstandings. Franklin and many others were often confused by the behavior of the predator. His statements create an incomplete picture of the Eagle. Most raptors will steal food from others. Bald Eagles often fight with each other over food also. The raptor birds often fly off when confronted with smaller birds not because they are “scared” but because they don’t want to be bothered.

I watched two large turkey buzzards picking away at a groundhog or something. They both hopped back about 10 feet which I thought odd. Then down came a little hawk to pick at the groundhog. Once the hawk had grabbed a piece he went back to the top of the utility pole, and the huge buzzards hopped back in. They repeated this over and over. Was pretty interesting to watch.

Do you use a pretty fancy works to capture that sort of photo?

Yes. If you click on the photo in post 59, it brings up the photo as posted in Flickr. Once in Flickr scroll down below the photo to see the equipment I used. The camera is a Canon 5D Mark IV, a 30 megapixel camera. The main telephoto lens is a Canon 500mm f/4L IS (Image Stabilized) II USM. The II stands for the second version of this lens meaning that it is a pound and a half lighter than the previous Canon 500mm f/4L lens. The 1.4x III is a teleconverter that magnifies the 500mm focal length by 1.4 making the lens combination 700mm rather than 500mm. The higher the mm, the more the image is enlarged on the camera sensor.

Finally, the 30 megapixel camera means that I can crop the image captured by the camera significantly while still maintaining good resolution. The image posted in post 59 is only 12 percent of the whole image the camera captured. You can click on the image in Flickr and it blows the image up further so that you can see more detail.

The camera, lens, and teleconverter weigh less than 10 pounds, meaning that I often handhold the combination to get photos of flying birds. As the information below the image in Flickr says, my shutter speed was 1/1600th of a second, fast enough to stop wing motion. My ISO (a light setting) was 200, which means there should be little photographic noise in the photo. High ISO (i.e., ISO in the thousands) can result in grainy and "noisy" photos.

I also used Photoshop to fine tune the photo adjusting contrast and appearance slightly to better show the subject.

Bird photography is a good hobby for me.

Scavengers like turkey vultures, caracara, and some hawks have a "pecking order" concerning carrion. Turkey vultures are low in the pecking order, and caracara easily drive them away from road kill. Finally a hawk like a Harris's Hawk dominates and drives away caracara (and vultures) from road kill.

I was driving down a rural road in South Texas and stopped to see birds gathered around a road-killed rabbit on the road. A car came whizzing by me and the bird scattered. I got the following photo of the birds reconverging on the rabbit carcass. There are 7 caracara, 2 turkey vultures (the large birds with the red heads), and one Harris's Hawk (the bird on the left).

The Harris's hawk immediately stood on the carcass which was gradually pulled out into the surrounding field. The vultures flew off into the field, while the hawk fought off the caracaras. The only caracaras that dared to challenge the hawk were the juveniles, who didn't know any better.

Here is a photo that showed the final distribution of birds around the rabbit carcass. The hawk was standing on the carcass chasing off a juvenile caracara. The vultures were out in the field a distance away.

I used to go on half-day birding tours at the King Ranch outside of Kingsville, Texas. On one of the tours we watched a caracara chasing a turkey vulture up in the sky. The tour guide, an expert on the King Ranch birds, said that caracaras chase the turkey vultures to make the vultures vomit the carrion they had eaten. Since that occasion I have noticed other caracaras chasing turkey vultures in the air. Never saw the vultures throw up though.

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