— from Science Alert —

It only lasted for a savage, fleeting instant, but for eight intense seconds last week an eagle, a fox, and a rabbit flew across the sky as one.

In an incredibly rare scene, photographers have captured the moment a bald eagle swooped down upon a young red fox clutching a rabbit, and in its whirlwind attempt to steal the fox’s prey, the whole trio becomes airborne.

The surreal episode is a dramatic example of kleptoparasitism – where an animal steals food or prey from another – and the phenomenon probably doesn’t get much more extraordinary than this fierce display witnessed at the San Juan Island National Historical Park in Washington State last week.

Nature photographer Kevin Ebi of Living Wilderness witnessed this “especially dramatic act of thievery” as he spent a day observing young foxes rest, play, and hunt on the park’s grasslands.

As he watched, Ebi saw a young red fox catch a rabbit and start carrying it across the meadow, before the scene was violently interrupted from above.

“Behind me, I heard the cry of a bald eagle,” Ebi writes on his blog. “I turned around and saw it approaching fast. I knew it wanted the rabbit.”

As Ebi explains, the resulting swoop was even more dramatic than he expected, because the fox didn’t back down from this aerial threat and simply surrender its rabbit dinner.

“Instead, the fox, with its jaw still clenched on the rabbit, inadvertently got snagged by the bald eagle,” Ebi explains.

“The eagle lifted the young fox and rabbit into the sky triggering an even more dramatic struggle.”

For a vivid, disbelief-suspending eight seconds – captured on video by another photographer present, Zachary Hartje – the fox and eagle frantically tussle over the rabbit as the trio cartwheels across the sky.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email