The Life Of Birds 4. Meat-Eaters (9 of 14)

The Life Of Birds

Flamingos filter the algae from the water with their beaks, and vegetable is turned into flesh.
And that flesh is food for eagles.
The flamingos have to go into the shallows to drink from the spring that provides the only fresh water in the lake.
But here they are very vulnerable.
As the eagle approaches, the flamingos stampede into deeper water.
The eagle won't tackle them there because it has difficulty in lifting anything much bigger than a fish and carrying it away.
So it can only eat a flamingo in the shallows or on the shore.
This concentration of prey is so dense that pairs of fish eagles have been able to establish themselves every mile or so around the margins of the lake.

But even this number of hunters has little effect on the size of the flamingo population.
Fish eagles normally snatch fish from the surface of the water, they don't usually tackle a bird on the wing, but there is no need to do so here.
Now it has to drag its victim to the shore.
Few hunters can have a greater concentration of prey continuously at their disposal The flamingos are back in the shallows.
It would be difficult to imagine a more barren hunting territory than this lava field in the volcanic islands of the Galapagos.
But there's a bird that finds its prey even here.