Poacher!

The dog next door was barking like mad a little while ago.  She's not a barker by nature, so I figured there was somebody outside.  When I looked, there was Harley walking along with a fish in his beak that was about the size of my hand.  Harley's head, as you probably remember, is about the size of a ping pong ball.

I was upstairs and immediately galloped downstairs (yeah, about as graceful as you're picturing) to grab the camera.  When I got to the side window and opened the blinds, Harley was there but had put down the fish.  There was no way he was going to swallow this thing whole, so I guess he was going to pick at the flesh?  And so I focused the camera as well as I could through the screen and waited.  Before I could get a single picture, he flew away.  Without the fish.

What the...?

...and then an eagle landed on top of the fish!  That son of a gun is poaching fish from other birds!  OK, I get that he has two increasingly large mouths to feed that can't quite leave the nest to hunt for themselves, but it just seems such a cruel way to make a living.

(at this point I will refrain from pointing out how interesting it is that our forefathers chose the bald eagle as the symbol of our country - the predator that sees something it wants and takes that thing away from the 'lesser' creature that did all the work in the first place)

Anyway, I did manage to get two other pictures before lunch flew back to the nest.  Hope you enjoy them!