A liitle to much nature!

A little to much nature!

Headed out to the Cattle Egret rookery yesterday afternoon as there is enough light now when I get home from work to go out and take some shots. Eventually the light started to hit the wall but I saw what one last photo op. At the rookery there is also a number of Ibis and Intermediate Egrets nesting. I looked on at what I thought was a parent feeding a chick. You can hear the chicks but the nests are too high and the chicks still to small to see. Anyway this Intermediate Egret was craning down and with sharp head movements giving something to the chick. Turns out it wasn't food. It was animal infanticide. This particular egret decided it was taking over the nest of other egrets that were out gathering food. I'll spare you the gory details and photo's, but once it had dispatched the chick it tossed it out of the nest and settled in. Ain't nature beautiful!

That's life. Seen it before with birds.Gotta take the good with the edibles,um, bad.

Mother Nature.....not quite the way Disney depicts it. Actually, it's not even close.

Unfortunately that survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom.

Nature is beautiful but sometimes cruel..

I feel for professional nature photographers that study groups of animals around for a few years (Like David Attenbourough's documentaries), become so close to them then view and photograph graphic scenes like the above.. I can't imagine how hard it is to sit back and not intervene..

Somersetscott said:

Nature is beautiful but sometimes cruel..

I feel for professional nature photographers that study groups of animals around for a few years (Like David Attenbourough's documentaries), become so close to them then view and photograph graphic scenes like the above.. I can't imagine how hard it is to sit back and not intervene..

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There was one scene from the recent 'AFRICA' series that I recall hearing about, a baby elephant was abandoned as it was born too late in the season and was not strong enough for the annual migration. Needless to say the camera crew could only sit and watch as the baby elephant withered away to nothing. Also another scene where the older shoebill stork picked and hammered its younger sibling and demanded the food for itself. The mother ignored the weaker and fed the stronger, the weak one died. The film crews say that their hearts were heavy from seeing such acts, but as they were only documenting they could not interfere in anyway. Wouldn't be easy.

Yup! saw both those episodes..

The Mother elephant watched her family group walk off then watched her calf die slowly, nudging it with encouragement to carry on.. Really sad

The stork one was awful too - the mother almost trampled the runt of the two on the way back through and it was only an 'insurance policy' as these type of stork will only raise one. Pretty bad

No matter how sad I always seem to watch them and glued to the screen all the way through. I love it that they spend the last ten mins of the documentary explaining the time, equipment and methodology behind the first 50mins of footage..

Had a situation the other week,a sparrow hawk caught a bird close to the ground and they both ended up on the floor,just bringing the camera up when an idiot ran in and scared the hawk into releasing its prey,thats just cruel he said,i replied you f ing idiot its not going to turn vegetarian through you doing that.

Think some one ask the question what do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant.

mikew said:

... what do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant.

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Depends. Which one is tastier?

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We have a bird feeder in our back yard that's been there since I was a kid. Within the past 10 years or so, there have been hawks and falcons in our yard which were never present previously. A couple of weeks ago I was about to open the back door when I heard the whoosh of pigeon wings flying away as a flock. I stepped outside and saw hawk sitting on top of a pigeon in the corner of the yard where the fence meets the house.

My immediate reaction was HEY!!! The hawk quickly flew off--right into the side of our house! It dropped the pigeon, and the pigeon was able to fly away but I could tell it was injured.

I know it is the circle-of-life, but I really hate seeing any birds, mammals, or fish getting attacked by a predator.