Tourists have captured on digital camera the unbelievable mid-air second two eagles seem to struggle it out over a snake at one in every of Australia’s prime vacationer locations. In the video from K’gari, two white-bellied sea eagles might be seen flying alongside a seaside. The one in entrance has the snake’s lengthy physique dangling from its claws when all of a sudden the second hen grabs the reptile and makes off with it.
The clip, which was filmed from a car travelling alongside the sand, then captures each birds as they dive down into the bushes. But simply as you suppose the primary eagle is about to steal again its breakfast, the second hen drops all the way down to the bottom and the primary retains on flying out of the shrubs empty handed.
Theory behind fascinating behaviour
Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW and a hen ecologist, believes we’re witnessing a mum or dad instructing second. “It could be attention-grabbing to know whether or not these two birds truly had a relationship as a result of it may very well be an grownup male or grownup feminine with the white on it [the first bird] after which the immature hen with the brown feathers [the second bird] is likely to be one in every of their chicks that is grown up,” he instructed Yahoo News Australia. “So it will be used to being fed by the adults and it may very well be that it is coming in to get the meals that one in every of its mother and father has simply bought, and taking it away.”
However, Kingsford added the pair appeared to be swapping the snake, indicating that possibly there is a little bit of competitors occurring. “The grownup may very well be saying, ‘Look, you are old sufficient to exit and get your personal meals, I’m not gonna feed you anymore and I had it first’, however the younger one should be at that stage the place it is comfortable to take meals from its mother and father,” he defined.
“When they get to that kind of age the place they should exit and get their very own meals and territories, the adults principally kick them out of the nest, and there is fairly a little bit of competitors between mother and father and offspring then.”
What was for brekky?
As for what the pair of birds had been combating for, Kingsford believes it may have been a python. “There are many birds of prey, together with eagles and falcons, that can take snakes and so they’re fairly able to doing that,” he stated. “It’s a extremely helpful meals useful resource for them if they will discover them.”
He added that sea eagles may even take different birds and small mammals in the event that they get an opportunity “as a result of they’re such huge birds”.
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