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Posts: 3910
| This is a story about an eagle getting a coot..
Looked out on the lake around noon today and saw an unusual sight - about 100 coots packed into such a tight group they were climbing over each other. But they were moving, too, pretty quck across the water with a stiff steady south wind blowing, maybe 15mph. A mobile coot boil.
Then I figured it out.
Stepped out to the deck looked up and saw a big bald eagle holding in the stiff wind, looking down about 100 yards upwind of the pile of coots. I watched for a while then a single coot surfaces right below the big bird. The eagle drops like a shot and at the last moment the coot goes under water. The eagle stops right at the surface and hovers in the strong wind about a foot off the water for up to maybe 15 seconds, then lets the wind lift him up and he hovers about 30 yards above the water, watching for the coot. The pod of coots are now about 200 yeards away and still so tight they look like a huge innertube.
The eagle only wants the one he's cut from the herd, though, and swipes at the lone coot every time the coot comes to the surface. The eagle takes turns hovering over a just miss and then going up high, holding in spot down wind and maybe 30 yards in the air. Every time the coot surfaces it stays up for a longer time, maybe he's getting worn out. But that was a smart coot and so far can't be caught.
After 20 minutes and 4 or 5 real close misses the eagle trys someting different. Recall, so far the approach has been that the eagle dives down out of the sky, misses the coot by seconds at most, and then the eagle hovers over the spot where the eagle hopes the coot will surface. The eagle rises on up drafts and the process starts over. This isn't working, though, so the eagle does something completely different. And it works. Check it...
The eagle went unusually high and away and hovered in the steady wind. When the coot next came to the surface, maybe 80-100(?!) yards from the hovering eagle, the eagle shot straight down to the water surface, but not to the coot. Instead the eagle does a 90* turn at the water surface maybe 40 yards downwind from the coot. The eagle shot like a rocket right above the wave tops, even hitting water with wing tips now a coupls times. FAST flying and into the wind. At the very last second the coot saw the eagle went under the surface and I thought it was another miss. But this time it was too close of a call; without slowing down the eagle reached under the water and snatched up that coot.
What a great show. Hope you liked the story. |
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Posts: 462
Location: Antioch, IL | Great story Ranger! Would have loved to have seen this. Here is a photo my Dad snapped yesterday. (Also love the eagle on the ice pic that Worrall posted on icefirst)
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| Saw the same thing in MN 2 years ago Ranger. One Eagle sat in a tree and the other one worked the coot over exactly like you saw. Trying to time it and partly I wonder if it was trying to wear the coot out. Eventually it timed it right and hit the water and came up with the coot and both Eagles left for supper. Very very cool to watch. |
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Posts: 3910
| I saw another eagle deal like this some years ago, but briefer and more brutal.
I was in stop and go traffic on a highway next to a pretty big pond. Just outside St. Louis. A pair of eagles were taking turns beating the living #*#* out of a great blue heron. The heron was trapped on the water surface, the eagles taking turns dive bombing, besting up and then lifting up away from the heron. It was really quite brutal, like I said. The heron, a full grown blue, was so beat down it couldn't swim straight, let alone fly away.
Traffic started moving, I creep out of sight and didn't see the outcome. But I suspect the heron came to a bad end. |
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Posts: 1460
Location: Kronenwetter, WI | Cool story, thanks for sharing. Here is a live web-cam of a nesting eagle with 2 new hatchlings we have been watching the past two days. Last I checked the third egg had yet to hatch. This morning she was feeding her hatchlings from a rabbit she had caught and was laying in the nest. Right now it looks like there might be some kind of bird she'd caught laying there in the nest with her.
http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles
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Posts: 1185
Location: Wishin I Was Fishin' | That is an awesome cam on the Eagles.
It sure would be awesome to put a cam at the Dam too. |
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Posts: 3910
| Cool eagle cam for sure! |
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Posts: 994
Location: Minnesota: where it's tough to be a sportsfan! | They can do thinngs you can't believe. I saw an adult with a smallmouth of about 3+ lbs. The eagle could barely get going airborn and then would come back down on the water. He would stand on the fish rest then go again. Hopped that pig all the way to the shore. He could stand on it a whaile too,. |
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Posts: 3910
| Critters are so cool. I love that cougars are coming back.. Every time I read that a couger chewed up a mountain biker I send $20 to the World Wildefie Fund. Every time I read the couger killed the person, and the person was republican, I send the $20 and throw a party!
stirr it up |
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| I had an encounter with a cougar while deer hunting. I wish they would go away. All fun and games till you are in the timber with one running around right before you are getting ready to walk out at dark. Not fun..... |
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| We have a nesting pair of eagles across the lake from our cottage and they are very cool to watch. A couple years ago my daughter and I were out fishing right at dusk when an immature eagle came soaring down the shore line. Went right over the boat and looked to be heading for a group of mallards about a hundred yards down. They went into full panic as it dove but it came up with what looked like a good sized sucker. Then it flew back and landed in a big pine right in front of our boat. He ate the fish, while watching us watch him. I never figured out who was the entertainment.
But as cool as the eagles are, we now have an osprey hunting our chain, and they are incredible fishermen. They only catch and eat live prey, fish only. Our neighbors were out for an evening cruise last year and saw the osprey catch a good sized fish but as it started to fly away an eagle came out of the sky and tried to take it. They said the fish got dropped in the water several times but eventually the osprey's superior flying allowed it to escape, with the fish. |
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Posts: 137
| The eagles in the cam are nesting above the fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa, and there was a very good documentary about the same nest in a Nature show on PBS. Possibly one of the eagles is the same as in the documentary, but the female in the documentary had died during the filming of the show. In the documentary they showed a number of birds attacking and capturing coots and said that coots were one of their most common prey items. My brother and I have seen bald eagles capture and harass coots on a lake that we fish quite a bit here in Indiana. Sometimes they seem to be tormenting the things rather than feeding. Interesting note, I grew up in Iowa back in the seventies when i was a kid, and saw a bald eagle on an overnight canoe trip near Decorah that my dad and brothers went on. It was pretty cool back then, as there weren't many left in the lower 48. Still love to see them, although it seems they are more and more common which is a good thing. Pretty cool watching the chicks in the nest.
Here is a cool shot of one that I got super close to on Apache Trail in Arizona. Had to lean out the side of the car to take a picture of it as it sat above us on a rock.
Edited by The Toad 4/4/2011 8:11 PM
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Posts: 96
Location: Eau Claire | Darn eagle stole my biggest crappie off the ice last week when I moved to another hole. Is it muskie season yet? I'd like to see one get even with that eagle for me... |
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Posts: 183
Location: Grand Forks ND | Eagle vs. Pheasant |
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| Saw a similar act of eagle vs. coot last november down on the coast in Fl... we watched the eagle dive on the coot for about 30 mins and never got it as far as we saw... but the fish stopped biting so we have to move. But everytime it was inches away, and very stubborn in doing the same action over and over again. I would assume the eagle eventually got the coot, either from dive bombing it or the coot eventually get tired and couldn't keep diving like that. |
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