Exploring Kootenay Lake

The Common Merganser predominantly eats fish, which it catches live, brings to the surface, and swallows whole (see merganser stuffing). Chicks start by catching insects but switch to fish after a few weeks. By the time they become juveniles, their diet should be predominantly live fish. Yet, knowing just what to catch might be a skill mastered slowly.

An adult watches as a juvenile surfaces with an inedible fish carcass. One can almost hear the adult saying: “This training may take longer than I had hoped.” 

The Kokanee salmon are spawning and everyone is happy. Tourists come to watch and others come to feed: ravens, gulls, eagles, vultures, ospreys, otters, bears, mallards, mergansers, rainbow trout, and (the focus of this posting), herons.

There are perhaps a half-dozen Great Blue Herons working the creek. They were stationed on trees, rocks, sandbanks and in the water. Now and then one would fly to a new spot.

A juvenile heron stood in the creek eyeing a Kokanee (reddish smudge, bottom centre).

It lunged. Its bill can be seen under the water approaching the fish.

Success. But, the Kokanee is athwart the bill and must be turned before it can be swallowed.

With a flick of its head, the heron rotates the fish and quickly downs the whole thing.

Not Kokanee: a few correspondents challenged my identification of the fish as a Kokanee. It is now confirmed to be a sucker.

For many years, I have wanted to capture a sequence showing an osprey plunging into the Lake and then rising out of the water carrying a fish. Four summers ago, I managed parts of the sequence, but alas when the osprey surfaced, it had no fish (see, osprey plunge).   

There could be many reasons for my failures: The event is unpredictable; It is fleeting; It is distant. But, the bottom line is that, as yet, I just have not figured out how to capture the moment. Sure, I have pictures of an osprey packing a fish (often headless), but I have had difficulty recorded the moment of capture. 

Although I still lack the whole sequence, progress was made last Monday while walking along a beach near the mouth of Kokanee Creek. I heard a splash and swung around to see an Osprey lifting a sucker from the Lake.

My favourite shot of the capture was taken one second later as the airborne Osprey flew off with its reluctant prize.

With a killing, a high-speed chase, a mugging, and a plot twist worthy of the mystery genera, the story might make a fine movie—if only the participants hadn’t been three birds and a dead fish.

An Osprey caught a large fish and was carrying it off when a sub-adult Bald Eagle, wanting the fish, gave chase. By the time I managed any pictures, they had already made at least one loop around the bay.

With its greater wing loading, the eagle can fly about ten percent faster than the osprey, so during a straight chase, the eagle will overtake the osprey.

However, the smaller osprey is more agile and can make sharper turns. I assume that is the reason the osprey kept banking and turning in tight circles.

On the straight stretch, the eagle was clearly gaining.

It passed just below the osprey in an attempt to dislodge the fish.

As can be seen here, the osprey is still holding onto the fish, but the eagle had been effective.

A moment later, the osprey dropped the fish (see the disturbed water at the bottom of the picture). Meanwhile, the sub-adult eagle, probably now confident of success, flies by overhead.

Suddenly, the game changed: An adult Bald Eagle came from above the fray and plummeted past the others on its way to the fish. It seems the adult had been waiting for the younger eagle to tire both the osprey and itself.

The adult plucked the fish from the Lake and flew off. If the adult really had planned this and bided its time until the other two birds had tired, then that is one canny eagle.