Woodchucks have been a persistent challenge for our attempts at gardening. Not only do they find the fruit of the garden a delicacy, but the plants themselves are a sweet treat when there is nothing else to eat. This year we are skipping the garden as our chief weeder has acquired a summer job. Even so I decided this year to try to work on the woodchuck issue this year. Friday night I spotted on that was running around near the leech field, which is also a no-no for us and grabbed the old .22 and took him out and thought nothing else of it. Until later that evening I notice a huge bird landed right around where the woodchuck met his demise.
I grabbed the camera and the telephoto lens with my Nikon IR Remote setup and snapped a few pictures. Sadly in my rush I missed a few settings and the pictures were not that great. None are terribly good, but it was interesting to see. Above you can see is an immature bald eagle standing over the woodchuck. He must have been flying overhead when he spotted the meal. Even though he was probably 125 yards away, he was pretty skittish as he let me set the camera up right by the door, but if I tried to move it further out on the deck he would take flight and come back later. At some point I gave up since we were losing light.
In the morning I found the immature one had shown back up with a mature one. The mature one was scarfing down the remains of the woodchuck while the little one was pacing around waiting for his turn. Which wasn’t to happen, since it seemed the other mature adult showed up and decided it was next in line. I believe the other adult left after a short period until the new adult finished off the woodchuck. And junior it seems went hungry despite him finding the woodchuck the prior night.
One of the more amusing things to see was the smaller birds like the sandpipers, red wing blackbirds, and others get upset the eagles had arrived. They were trying to protect their nests I assume, but you have one eagle eating and two waiting in line, you would think the best course of action would be to not upset the giant birds lest they decide you look like a good consolation prize or appetizer. The little birds would just dive at the eagles and basically bounce off them. It was amusing to watch as the eagles were pretty much unfazed or at most annoyed.
I have an album of the raw images here. https://photos.crazydays.org/s/Eagles