Aerial Combat Over Lake Tapps

Yesterday, I received this email titled: Aerial Combat Over Lake Tapps.
The photos were taken by a professional photographer who sent them out as email with a wonderful commentary. I've googled the title to see if he published them and could only find a site that had copied his email.
I wish I could give him credit here for both photos and words. It's just too great not to share!

Update: Thanks to a commenter, I have the name of this photographer/author: Thank you Gary Wheeler!!

Update # 2: Thanks to another commenter, a prologue from the original email
"I was walking along the shore of Lake Tapps on Monday, and noticed a a little more than 1/4-mile away (as measured later by GoogleEarth). I saw a Bald Eagle circling and repeatedly diving on what I thought must be a school of fish. Soon he was joined by another Eagle and they began to fight each other for the prey. Territorial Eagle fights do happen,but I've never seen one, nor have I seen any good photos...

All these pics were taken hand-held with my Panasonic FZ-28 at 18X zoomwhich is 486mm. All pics were taken on Intelligent Automatic which is justpoint-and-shoot. I had previously selected okay up to ISO@0 and it was abright day, which is as good way to force the shutter speed to 1/500 sec. to1/1000 sec. for all the shots even though the camera performed everything automatically.

Most of the images were cropped to a small fraction of their original sizewhich effectively multiplies that Optical Focal Length of 486mm by the ratioof: original image width ÷ cropped image width. The action was over1/4-mile away, and I ended up with effective Focal Lengths of well over 1,000mm for half the pics shown here, so they are not up to my normalstandards of image quality. Nevertheless, they are exciting and tell quite a story...Enjoy, Gary


The fellow sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck never realized what he was missing.
The little duck watches as the eagle speeds straight at him at about 40 mph.

With perfect timing the duck always dove and escaped with a mighty splash! Then he'd pop to the surface as soon as the Eagle flew past. This was repeated over and over for several minutes. I worried the poor duck would tire and that would be the last of him.

A second eagle joined the attack! The duck kept diving "just in time," so the eagles began to dive into the water after him!

After several minutes the Eagles got frustrated and began to attack each other. They soon began to dive vertically, level out, and attack head-on in an old fashioned game of high speed "Chicken," Sometimes they'd back away from each other at the last possible second. Other times they'd climb vertically and tear into each other while falling back toward the water. (The duck catches his breath at the right side of the picture.)

A terrible miscalculation! The luckiest shot of my life catches the 100 mph collision between two Bald Eagles.

One Eagle stayed aloft and flew away, but the other lies motionless in a crumpled heap. The lucky duck survived to live another day.

It's sad to watch an Eagle drown. He wriggled, flopped and struggled mostly under water. He finally got his head above water and with great difficulty managed to get airborne. To my astonishment, he flew straight toward me, and it was the most wretched and unstable bird flight I've ever seen!

He had a good six foot wingspread and looked mighty angry. I was concerned that I might become his next victim. The bedraggled Eagle circled me once then it lit atop a nearby fir tree.

My half hour wait was rewarded by this marvelous sight. He flew away, almost as good as new. May America recover as well."

Again, thank you to the unknown photographer/journalist who produced this work. If you see this and object to this publication or better, want to add your name for credit just leave a comment or email for me!