I wrote recently about a personal challenge to myself, to move my wildlife photography from mere "find the animal and shoot it" to telling at least part of a story. In photography, the story doesn't have to be complete. In fact, sometimes, if the story presents more questions than answers, that can be a good thing. That's kind of the case here.
At the end of a kayaking trip, as I shoved my boat up to the shore, I saw a clump of feathers bouncing around on the bank. Not sure what I was looking at, maybe an injured bird?, I decided to look closer, and shoot. Here's what I saw.
Now, the camera saw it much more clearly than I did at the time. What you're looking at is two birds (Carolina wrens?), fighting it out. And I don't mean play fighting. These two were not only using their sharp beaks against each other, they were actually clawing at each other's eyes! As they continued, and even ended up in the water, here's how it looked.
Crazy, right? And here's the final, and crowning shot. Bird rage!
Bird Rage, by Reed A. George
Nikon D700, Nikkor 200-400mm f4 AF-S VR Lens
As they finally split up and ended the fight, with one bird chasing the other off into the bushes, I just couldn't keep up with the big lens. I missed a couple of other interesting shots, but do feel that these show the event pretty well.
Does anyone know if I have the species correct, or what these vicious little birds were doing to each other?
I'm happy to have caught some very interesting behavior in this sequence.
DMC-365.blogspot.com
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