Garter Snake's dinner

 

I promised you yesterday some more exciting things from my trip to the Green Island Wetlands last Sunday. While driving slowly on a dam between two ponds I suddenly saw a Garter Snake on the gravel road. The snake didn’t move away because it was busy with a Leopard Frog. The frog didn’t look too good, it was already dead, probably hit by a car. The Garter Snake didn’t care about how the dinner looked and starting swallowing its prey.

The snake didn’t worry too much about my presence, neither did I worry about the snake. Garter Snakes are harmless for humans and we see this species more than any other snake in our area. Shooting from above didn’t appeal to me and the only option to get an interesting perspective was to put my belly in the dirt.

It wasn’t long before only a frog leg stuck out of its mouth that the snake moved to the water and disappeared between the reeds…

Breakfast for the eagle

 

I was about to enter my car down at the Mississippi River yesterday morning when I saw a Bald Eagle flying up from the water with something flapping in its talons. My first thought was it had caught a fish. The bird landed in a tree nearby and I realized that the eagle had preyed a small bird, which I later identified as an American Coot. They are here in abundance and obviously part of the eagles diet. What followed was a bloody mess for the bird and the eagle didn’t look too pretty either around its bill. I have seen many Bald Eagles catching and eating fish but never feeding on waterfowl until yesterday.

My tripod was already stored in the car and so I tried to handle the long and heavy lens by hand. Branches obstructed the view and the sun was straight behind the eagle, means I had to move slowly to a different spot. The eagle gave me less than three minutes to figure out a way to overcome a tricky light situation and find the gap between the gazillions of bare branches. It wasn’t until a fisherman’s boat drove by behind me that the eagle took off with the remains of the coot in its talons. What an exciting moment to start a day with…