Staff photo by Andy Molloy
An American Bald Eagle lands with the carcass of a gull it it killed along the banks of the Kennebec River in Augusta in 2005. A flock of gulls and a murder of crows mobbed the eagle as it sat on the ice next to an emerging spot of water. Provoked, the eagle pinned a gull to the ice. The eagle ate his meal in peace until resuming his flight upstream.

About the shot

A classic winter bird fight raged above the Kennebec River. Gulls shrieking, crows squawking and a lone eagle uttering pathetic chirps.

Two women had joined me beneath Memorial Bridge in Augusta while I photographed the Bald Eagle being mobbed in the air by gulls and crows.

"Eagles don't consume birds," I told the women. I clicked a few frames. They are fish eagles, I explained, devoting most of their energy to capturing critters beneath the water.

I had a captive audience: An eagle in the lens and a pair of ladies watching me. The gulls dove on the eagle and crows snatched at it while it wobbled in the sky above the Kennebec River.

It's a shame, I recall saying, because eagles could eat well and eat often if they did eat birds. But, I said with pitiful emphasis, they don't.

At that moment the eagle turned, dove and snatched a gull with its talons. Silence from my companions and silence in the sky as the murder of crows and mob of gulls abandoned the eagle's airspace. The eagle calmly picked apart the gull on the shelf of ice next to the flowing Kennebec.

"What else don't they eat?" one of my friends asked.

Silence from the photographer, too.

--by Andy Molloy, Kennebec Journal staff photographer

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